Collective navigation of complex networks: Participatory greedy routing

TL;DR

This paper explores how participatory incentives and evolutionary game dynamics can promote collective navigation in complex networks, leading to self-organized clusters that enhance overall system navigability.

Contribution

It introduces an evolutionary game model demonstrating how incentives can foster participation and global navigability in large, complex networks.

Findings

Global navigability can emerge through participatory incentives.

Complete breakdown of navigation is possible under certain conditions.

The system self-organizes into local clusters of participating agents.

Abstract

Many networks are used to transfer information or goods, in other words, they are navigated. The larger the network, the more difficult it is to navigate efficiently. Indeed, information routing in the Internet faces serious scalability problems due to its rapid growth, recently accelerated by the rise of the Internet of Things. Large networks like the Internet can be navigated efficiently if nodes, or agents, actively forward information based on hidden maps underlying these systems. However, in reality most agents will deny to forward messages, which has a cost, and navigation is impossible. Can we design appropriate incentives that lead to participation and global navigability? Here, we present an evolutionary game where agents share the value generated by successful delivery of information or goods. We show that global navigability can emerge, but its complete breakdown is possible as well. Furthermore, we show that the system tends to self-organize into local clusters of agents who participate in the navigation. This organizational principle can be exploited to favor the emergence of global navigability in the system.