At first glance, the web may appear to be an almost random mass of information. However, researchers say that in fact,there is a 'Kevin Bacon' effect - meaning any web page is connected to any other by just 19 clicks. The statistic echoes the famous 'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon' game, which claims anyone on Earth can be linked to the actor through just six people. The Opte project is one of several aiming to show the web graphically. In this image, based on 2005 data, red lines represent links between web pages in Asia, green for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, blue for North America, yellow for Latin America and white for unknown IP addresses. Estimates of exactly how big the web is vary dramatically because many pages are 'hidden' in services such as Facebook or in other private sites. However, according to the often quoted site worldwidewebsize.com, the most recent figure, as of Monday, 18 February, is 14.81billion pages. 'As the Web began to grow in the 1990s, it was thought that it most probably had the properties of a random network,' says Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási. The researchers originally determined this by constructing algorithms that collected all the links on a Web page and then followed them to their destinations, and repeating the process over and over again. His research, first published in Nature in 1999, has now been expanded and published in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society. His team found that in fact, any page on the web can be linked to any other via a surprisingly small number of clicks, known as the 'small world property'. It say 'that two nodes are likely to be connected, even in such a very large and sparse scale-free network as the Web, by a relatively short path of nodes—in the case of the Web, the path length is about 19,' said Professor Barabási. He claims the key to the web's fast expansion yet small 'Kevin Bacon . number' is the emergence of massive 'hubs' such as Facebook and Google. 'Such networks are in effect held together by a small number of highly connected hubs,' he writes. 'This scale-free property is an important organizing principle for the Web. 'Rather than virtually all nodes having more or less the same degree, . we should expect a few nodes to be very highly connected, and the vast . majority to have smaller degree than the average.' However, he warns that the system may cause problems should the 'superhubs' such as Facebook and Google be attacked by hackers. 'The flip side of this is that, in the event of a targeted attack, . where the most connected nodes are deliberately removed first, then the . network will be destroyed very quickly. 'This is the Achilles’ heel of a scale-free network,' he said. The first full Internet map created by the Opte Project in 2003 . Several projects have attempted to show the web as a single image, to give users an idea of what the connection actually looks like. One of the most impressive is the Opte Project, started by Barrett Lyon in 2003 to create publicly available visualizations of the web. 'This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe,' said Lyon. 'The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and aesthetics/art. 'Today the image has been used free of charge across the globe and is part of the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Boston Museum of Science.' In the map (pictured right), for example, red lines represent links between web pages in Asia, green for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, blue for North America, yellow for Latin America and white for unknown IP addresses. Although the most recent visualization is several years old, Lyon reports that he’s currently working on a new version of the project that will be released soon. 'When the time is right, I will release the new version of the project that I have slowly been building over the past five years,' he says on his web site.
Hungarian physicist claims that because of huge 'superhubs' like Google and Facebook, web pages are more connected to each other than expected .
Warns that this effect could be used to attack the web - with attacks of the 'superconnecters' being the achilles heel of the online world .
At first glance, the web may appear to be an almost random mass of information. However, researchers say that in fact,there is a 'Kevin Bacon' effect - meaning any web page is connected to any other by just 19 clicks. The statistic echoes the famous 'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon' game, which claims anyone on Earth can be linked to the actor through just six people. The Opte project is one of several aiming to show the web graphically. In this image, based on 2005 data, red lines represent links between web pages in Asia, green for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, blue for North America, yellow for Latin America and white for unknown IP addresses. Estimates of exactly how big the web is vary dramatically because many pages are 'hidden' in services such as Facebook or in other private sites. However, according to the often quoted site worldwidewebsize.com, the most recent figure, as of Monday, 18 February, is 14.81billion pages. 'As the Web began to grow in the 1990s, it was thought that it most probably had the properties of a random network,' says Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási. The researchers originally determined this by constructing algorithms that collected all the links on a Web page and then followed them to their destinations, and repeating the process over and over again. His research, first published in Nature in 1999, has now been expanded and published in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society. His team found that in fact, any page on the web can be linked to any other via a surprisingly small number of clicks, known as the 'small world property'. It say 'that two nodes are likely to be connected, even in such a very large and sparse scale-free network as the Web, by a relatively short path of nodes—in the case of the Web, the path length is about 19,' said Professor Barabási. He claims the key to the web's fast expansion yet small 'Kevin Bacon . number' is the emergence of massive 'hubs' such as Facebook and Google. 'Such networks are in effect held together by a small number of highly connected hubs,' he writes. 'This scale-free property is an important organizing principle for the Web. 'Rather than virtually all nodes having more or less the same degree, . we should expect a few nodes to be very highly connected, and the vast . majority to have smaller degree than the average.' However, he warns that the system may cause problems should the 'superhubs' such as Facebook and Google be attacked by hackers. 'The flip side of this is that, in the event of a targeted attack, . where the most connected nodes are deliberately removed first, then the . network will be destroyed very quickly. 'This is the Achilles’ heel of a scale-free network,' he said. The first full Internet map created by the Opte Project in 2003 . Several projects have attempted to show the web as a single image, to give users an idea of what the connection actually looks like. One of the most impressive is the Opte Project, started by Barrett Lyon in 2003 to create publicly available visualizations of the web. 'This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe,' said Lyon. 'The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and aesthetics/art. 'Today the image has been used free of charge across the globe and is part of the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Boston Museum of Science.' In the map (pictured right), for example, red lines represent links between web pages in Asia, green for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, blue for North America, yellow for Latin America and white for unknown IP addresses. Although the most recent visualization is several years old, Lyon reports that he’s currently working on a new version of the project that will be released soon. 'When the time is right, I will release the new version of the project that I have slowly been building over the past five years,' he says on his web site.
dramatically because many pages are 'hidden' in Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási. The Facebook and Google be attacked by hackers. 'The targeted attack, . where the most connected nodes the Achilles’ heel of a scale-free network,' he of the web. 'This project was created to make a