Range-based attack on links in scale-free networks: are long-range links responsible for the small-world phenomenon?

摘要

The small-world phenomenon in complex networks has been identified as beingdue to the presence of long-range links, i.e., links connecting nodes thatwould otherwise be separated by a long node-to-node distance. We find,surprisingly, that many scale-free networks are more sensitive to attacks onshort-range than on long-range links. This result, besides its importanceconcerning network efficiency and/or security, has the striking implicationthat the small-world property of scale-free networks is mainly due toshort-range links.