Truncation of power law behavior in "scale-free" network models due to information filtering.
We formulate a general model for the growth of scale-free networks under filtering information conditions-that is, when the nodes can process information about only a subset of the existing nodes in the network. We find that the distribution of the number of incoming links to a node follows a universal scaling form, i.e., that it decays as a power law with an exponential truncation controlled not only by the system size but also by a feature not previously considered, the subset of the network "accessible" to the node. We test our model with empirical data for the World Wide Web and find agreement.
Mossa
Stefano
S
Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Barthélémy
Marc
M
Eugene Stanley
H
H
Nunes Amaral
Luís A
LA
D001330:Electronic Data Processing / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D008962:Models, Theoretical