Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 260
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30998-1

Regular Article

The effect of the initial network configuration on preferential attachment

Department of Physics, Fribourg University, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

^a e-mail: matus.medo@unifr.ch

Received: 1 November 2012
Received in final form: 16 April 2013
Published online: 10 June 2013

Abstract

The classical preferential attachment model is sensitive to the choice of the initial configuration of the network. As the number of initial nodes and their degree grow, so does the time needed for an equilibrium degree distribution to be established. We study this phenomenon, provide estimates of the equilibration time, and characterize the degree distribution cutoff observed at finite times. When the initial network is dense and exceeds a certain small size, there is no equilibration and a suitable statistical test can always discern the produced degree distribution from the equilibrium one. As a by-product, the weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic is demonstrated to be more suitable for statistical analysis of power-law distributions with cutoff when the data is ample.