Analyzing resilience of interest-based social networks against node and link failures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the robustness of interest-based social networks against failures of nodes and links, providing probabilistic thresholds and experimental validation for maintaining connectivity and reliable communication.

Contribution

It introduces a formal analysis of network resilience with respect to node and link failures, deriving zero-one laws and exact probabilities for connectivity.

Findings

Derived zero-one law for network connectivity under failures

Established asymptotically exact probability results

Validated theoretical results with experiments

Abstract

In typical online social networks, users are linked by symmetric friend relations and can define circles of friends based on shared interests. In this paper, we look at social networks where users form links subject to both friendships and shared interests. Our goal is to understand resilience of these networks in terms of connectivity when both nodes and links are allowed to fail. We derive a zero-one law as well as the asymptotically exact probability result for connectivity under both node and link failures. The results answer the question of how to set the network parameters such that reliable message dissemination can be achieved. We formally prove the results and confirm the results via experiments as well.