The Net: not so vulnerable

Argh, which is it? Should we be worried that the Internet could come caving down around us or are we truly getting our feathers ruffled over nothing?

A key finding from researchers who have teased out the structure of the Internet during the past half-dozen years has been that that, though the Internet is resistant to random failures, attacks targeting the largest hubs could fragment the network (see Five percent of nodes keep Net together, Hubs increase Net risk).

A new study by researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the University of Adelaide in Australia, Internet2, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan, and AT&T Labs, however, shows that research describing the scale-free nature of the Internet has not captured the whole picture.

In light of the new findings, it looks like the Internet is fairly resilient to attacks. [Read the rest]