Thursday, October 2, 2014

Network Laws

Network laws are not laws like those passed in congress, but more like gravity.  They try to explain how the internet works and how it is expanded so much in such a short period of time.  Because of this, the laws apply to kinds of growth in networks, specifically Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks.

There are three main laws:

Sarnoff's Law: Value of a network increases linearly with the number of people in it

Reed's Law: Utility of a network increases exponentially

Metcalfe's Law: Value of a network increases by roughly square, or n2

Of these laws, I most agree with Reed's Law.

I don't think there is a set average rate of communication between each person on a network, but I do believe what you are capable of doing changes.  The more people, the more access to information, the more people to tell that information to, the more people for those people to spread the idea, the more people to make a joke about it and run that joke into the ground in a week...

Connectivity on the internet is a web, not a straight line.  So as you add more people, everyone has an extra line, which means an increase that is exponential, not linear.

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