Robustness analysis of static routing on networks

• We study the robustness of three typical routing strategies under network attacks.
• The EP is more robust than the SP and the OP on scale-free networks.
• The OP is more robust against cascading failures than the others on the power grid.

Robustness is one of the crucial properties that needs to be considered in the design of routing strategies on networks. We study the robustness of three typical routing strategies, which are the SP (shortest path), EP (efficient path), and OP (optimal path) strategies, by simulating several different kinds of attacks including random attacks, target attacks and cascading failures on scale-free networks. Results of the average path length, betweenness centrality, network capacity, etc., demonstrate that the EP strategy is more robust than the other two, and the OP strategy is more reliable than the SP strategy in general. However, on the power-grid network, the OP strategy is more resistant against cascading failures than the EP and SP strategies.