Comparing two newly proposed immunization strategies in networks

Epidemic attack such as worms and viruses spreading in complex networks like the Internet is a serious problem faced by network security researchers. Designing effective network immunization strategies is important to defend against them. Targeted immunization towards the most highly connected nodes in the network like HDF (High Degree First) strategy has been regarded to be the most effective strategy so far. Recently, two new immunization strategies are proposed that are shown to be more effective than HDF. One is called EGP (Equal Graph Partitioning), and the other is called “max − δ”. A natural question is which of the two is better? We do extensive simulations using NLDS (nonlinear dynamical systems) approach which accurately models SIS (Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible) type epidemic propagation, on BA model networks, AS-level Internet model networks and real AS-level Internet networks. We find that there exists an immunization dose threshold depending on the network topology below which “max − δ” is better than EGP while EGP is better than “max − δ” when the immunization doses used exceed the threshold. We point out that one should choose the better immunization strategy according to the network topology and the immunization doses at hand.

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