Vulnerability of labeled networks

We propose a metric for vulnerability of labeled graphs that has the following two properties: (1) when the labeled graph is considered as an unlabeled one, the metric reduces to the corresponding metric for an unlabeled graph; and (2) the metric has the same value for differently labeled fully connected graphs, reflecting the notion that any arbitrarily labeled fully connected topology is equally vulnerable as any other. A vulnerability analysis of two real-world networks, the power grid of the European Union, and an autonomous system network, has been performed. The networks have been treated as graphs with node labels. The analysis consists of calculating characteristic path lengths between labels of nodes and determining largest connected cluster size under two node and edge attack strategies. Results obtained are more informative of the networks’ vulnerability compared to the case when the networks are modeled with unlabeled graphs.