A Preciser LP-Based Algorithm for Critical Link Set Problem in Complex Networks

The critical link set problem in a network is to find a certain number of links (or edges) whose removal will degrade the connectivity of the network to the maximum extent. It is a fundamental problem in the evaluation of the vulnerability or robustness of a network because the network performance highly depends on its topology. Since it is an NP-complete problem, a LP-based (linear programming-based) approximation algorithm is proposed in this paper to find out the critical link set in a given network. The algorithm is evaluated with a real-world network and random networks generated by the ER model and the BA model. The experimental results have shown that the algorithm has better precision than the best-known HILPR algorithm with a polynomial-time extra cost.