Metcalfe's Law Refuted

pdp0x14 writes "Cnet News reports on a powerful refutation of Metcalfe's Law (that the value of a network goes up with n^2 in the number of members). The academic paper is available at Southwest Missouri State University. Basically, the thesis is that not all the links in a network are equally valuable, so Metcalfe's argument that everyone can connect to everyone (n(n-1)/2 links, roughly n^2) is irrelevant. The authors propose nlog(n) instead, a much smaller increase."

Comments

Smaller Networks Win Out

[MankyD]

The last paragraph makes a very interesting point:

When two networks merge, "the smaller network gains considerably more than the larger one. This produces an incentive for larger networks to refuse to interconnect without payment, a very common phenomenon in the real economy," the researchers conclude.

Assuming their research holds true, adding 100 computers to 100,000 computers is pretty worthless for a big network - they get only a small gain compared to their starting value. The small network, on the other hand, has huge amounts compared to where they started.

It's common sense, of course, but worth taking note of.