The diameter of the world wide web

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large-scale topology of the world wide web by constructing a topological model based on local connectivity measurements, revealing insights into its structure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to model the web's topology using local connectivity data, filling a gap in understanding its large-scale properties.

Findings

Web topology exhibits small-world characteristics

The web's degree distribution follows a power law

The model reveals high clustering and short path lengths

Abstract

Despite its increasing role in communication, the world wide web remains the least controlled medium: any individual or institution can create websites with unrestricted number of documents and links. While great efforts are made to map and characterize the Internet's infrastructure, little is known about the topology of the web. Here we take a first step to fill this gap: we use local connectivity measurements to construct a topological model of the world wide web, allowing us to explore and characterize its large scale properties.