The social network

Last month, Valdis Krebs used network mapping techniques to chart a terrorist network.

Now he reverses things - using some sociological techniques to look at how to design a computer network. In The Social Life of Routers, he says human interactions and networks have more in common than you might think:

Social network analysts look at complex human systems as an interconnected system of nodes (people and groups) and ties (relationships and flows)--much like an internetwork of routers and links. Human networks are often unplanned, emergent systems. Their growth is sporadic and self-organizing. Network ties end up being unevenly distributed, with some areas of the network having a high density of links and other areas of the network sparsely connected. These are called "small world networks." Computer networks often end up with similar patterns of connections--dense interconnectivity within subnetworks, and sparser connections uniting subnetworks into a larger internetwork.

Using these techniques, he says, can help in measuring and meeting the goals of reducing hop count, reducing available paths and increasing the number of failures a network can withstand.

Contact Online Executive Editor Adam Gaffin

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