A dissemination strategy for immunizing scale-free networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a practical, local-information-based dissemination strategy for immunizing scale-free networks, effectively reducing vulnerability to epidemics with minimal vaccine distribution.

Contribution

Introduces a new vaccine dissemination method that uses only local information, improving immunization efficiency in scale-free networks.

Findings

Method is effective in making networks nearly invulnerable with few vaccinated nodes.

Mathematical and simulation analysis confirm the method's efficiency.

Reduces vaccine requirements while maintaining high protection levels.

Abstract

We consider the problem of distributing a vaccine for immunizing a scale-free network against a given virus or worm. We introduce a new method, based on vaccine dissemination, that seems to reflect more accurately what is expected to occur in real-world networks. Also, since the dissemination is performed using only local information, the method can be easily employed in practice. Using a random-graph framework, we analyze our method both mathematically and by means of simulations. We demonstrate its efficacy regarding the trade-off between the expected number of nodes that receive the vaccine and the network's resulting vulnerability to develop an epidemic as the virus or worm attempts to infect one of its nodes. For some scenarios, the new method is seen to render the network practically invulnerable to attacks while requiring only a small fraction of the nodes to receive the vaccine.