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Epidemic Spreading in Scale-Free Networks

Romualdo Pastor-Satorras and Alessandro Vespignani
Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3200 – Published 2 April 2001
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Abstract

The Internet has a very complex connectivity recently modeled by the class of scale-free networks. This feature, which appears to be very efficient for a communications network, favors at the same time the spreading of computer viruses. We analyze real data from computer virus infections and find the average lifetime and persistence of viral strains on the Internet. We define a dynamical model for the spreading of infections on scale-free networks, finding the absence of an epidemic threshold and its associated critical behavior. This new epidemiological framework rationalizes data of computer viruses and could help in the understanding of other spreading phenomena on communication and social networks.

  • Received 20 October 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.3200

©2001 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Romualdo Pastor-Satorras1 and Alessandro Vespignani2

  • 1Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord, Mòdul B4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
  • 2The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), P.O. Box 586, 34100 Trieste, Italy

See Also

Internet Plagues Spread Rapidly

Phys. Rev. Focus 7, 15 (2001)

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Issue

Vol. 86, Iss. 14 — 2 April 2001

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