Metcalfe's law
The Metcalfe's Law is a rule of thumb about the cost-to-benefit ratio of communication systems. It assumes that the benefit of a communication system increases proportionally to the number of possible connections between the participants (i.e. roughly the square of the number of participants), while the costs only grow proportionally to the number of participants itself. See the illustration with networks of 2, 5 or 12 participants and 1, 10 or 66 connections. As a result, the benefits exceed the costs for any network above a certain size. The mathematically simple subject of consideration was first expressed by Robert Metcalfe in 1980. His considerations, which he himself never referred to as law and which he did not publish, remained unpublished until the publication of Metcalfe's Law and Legacy by George Gilder in 1993.
Metcalfe's law, so-called since then, explains many of the networking effects of communication technologies such as the Internet or Usenet , but more fundamentally than quantitatively. It can also be illustrated by the use of fax machines : a single fax machine is useless. However, with every additional device in the network, the possibilities of interaction increase as the number of possible faxes received and sent increases.
Since the 1990s, when several Western armies heralded a transformation , the rule has found its way into their communication technology networking. In the leading army in this regard, the US armed forces , the law finds its way into network-oriented warfare .
Serious objections were later raised, e.g. B. 2006 by Briscoe et al. in Metcalfe's Law is Wrong . In particular, it doubts the critical assumption that the utility actually grows in proportion to the square of the number of participants.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Metcalf's Law and Legacy ( Memento April 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, Benjamin Tilly: Metcalfe's Law is Wrong. In: spectrum.ieee.org. July 1, 2006, accessed January 2, 2017 .