A repair strategy to the attacked random and scale-free networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability and structural evolution of random and scale-free networks under attack and repair strategies, introducing a new measure of invulnerability and analyzing how network properties change over time.

Contribution

It presents a novel attack and repair model for networks, introduces the invulnerability I(s), and explores the effects on network stability and topology.

Findings

Both network types reach a stationary state with a power-law relation between invulnerability and repair probability.

A threshold for maximum degree influences the evolution of network topology.

Network parameters such as degree distribution and clustering coefficient change significantly during evolution.

Abstract

With a simple attack and repair evolution model, we investigate the stability and structural changes of the Erdos-Renyi random graphs (RG) and Barabasi-Albert scale-free (SF) networks. We introduce a new quantity, invulnerability I(s), to describe the stability of the system. We find that both RG and SF networks can evolve to a stationary state. The stationary value I_c has a power-law dependence on the repair probability p_re. We also analyze the effects of the repair strategy to the attack tolerance of the networks. We observe that there is a threshold, (k_max)_c, for the maximum degree. The maximum degree k_max at time s will be no smaller than (k_max)_c. We give further information on the evolution of the networks by comparing the changes of the topological parameters, such as degree distribution P(k), average degree <k>, shortest path length L, clustering coefficient C, assortativity r, under the initial and stationary states.