THE comprehensive lists of addresses that the internet now uses to route information to its destination may soon be a thing of a past. That鈥檚 because the internet鈥檚 peculiar network architecture appears to be precisely tuned to allow information to find its own way around.
The internet has a 鈥渟mall world鈥� architecture: in other words, it takes only a handful of steps to link any two parts, even though the network is enormous. But just because such short paths exist doesn鈥檛 mean they are easy to find.
At present, data is directed along the shortest path by the internet鈥檚 Border Gateway Protocol, which routes information from place to place using a global list that keeps track of which internet addresses are where. Lately, the massive task of keeping this list updated on servers throughout the internet is getting out of hand. 鈥淚t requires an enormous and ever-growing communications overhead,鈥� says computer scientist of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego, California. 鈥淏lack holes and unreachable islands of the internet are appearing everywhere.鈥�
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鈥淏lack holes and unreachable islands are appearing all over the internet鈥�
Now Krioukov and physicist Marian Bogu帽谩 of the in Spain have shown that the very structure of the internet may provide an alternative solution. By studying a model of the internet they were able to show that a simple routing algorithm is enough to get information from one point to another.
Their idea was to embed the network in a multidimensional space, giving each node a set of coordinates locating its position. Information is then routed from a given node to another by choosing whichever of its neighbours is closest to the destination in the imaginary space.
For networks with the internet鈥檚 鈥渟mall world鈥� structure, this simple trick, known as 鈥済reedy routing鈥�, is enough to ensure that information follows a short path, even when the network grows extremely large. 鈥淚t鈥檚 possible to navigate the network efficiently using only local information,鈥� Bogu帽谩s says.鈥�
This insight could help improve internet routing. , a network theorist at the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Marseille, France, says: 鈥淚t may open a route to more scalable strategies for the growing internet.鈥�
