Recent results from statistical physics show that large classes of complex
networks, both man-made and of natural origin, are characterized by high
clustering properties yet strikingly short path lengths between pairs of nodes.
This class of networks are said to have a small-world topology. In the context
of communication networks, navigable small-world topologies, i.e. those which
admit efficient distributed routing algorithms, are deemed particularly
effective, for example in resource discovery tasks and peer-to-peer
applications. Breaking with the traditional approach to small-world topologies
that privileges graph parameters pertaining to connectivity, and intrigued by
the fundamental limits of communication in networks that exploit this type of
topology, we investigate the capacity of these networks from the perspective of
network information flow. Our contribution includes upper and lower bounds for
the capacity of standard and navigable small-world models, and the somewhat
surprising result that, with high probability, random rewiring does not alter
the capacity of a small-world network.Comment: 23 pages, 8 fitures, submitted to the IEEE Transactions on
Information Theory, November 200
