
Researchers: Metcalfe's Law overshoots the mark
Summary: Rule that encouraged madcap expansion in the dot-com era turns out to have been, um, way too generous, scientists argue. ZDNet
Two University of Minnesota researchers have written a paper arguing that Metcalfe's Law, a rule of thumb that computes the value of communication networks, is overly optimistic.
Metcalfe's Law--a rule of thumb, really, that provided a rationale for aggressive expansion efforts during the dot-com boom--posits that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of devices in the network. But in a preliminary paper (click for PDF) published March 2, Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly of the university's Digital Technology Center concluded...