Universal scaling of distances in complex networks

Janusz A. Holyst, Julian Sienkiewicz, Agata Fronczak, Piotr Fronczak, Krzysztof Suchecki

Published 2004-11-05, updated 2005-09-09Version 2

Universal scaling of distances between vertices of Erdos-Renyi random graphs, scale-free Barabasi-Albert models, science collaboration networks, biological networks, Internet Autonomous Systems and public transport networks are observed. A mean distance between two nodes of degrees k_i and k_j equals to <l_{ij}>=A-B log(k_i k_j). The scaling is valid over several decades. A simple theory for the appearance of this scaling is presented. Parameters A and B depend on the mean value of a node degree <k>_nn calculated for the nearest neighbors and on network clustering coefficients.