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Problems with Metcalfe’s Law
While accurate in the early stages of network development, it is less accurate for larger networks
In 2006, an article was published in IEEE Spectrum that claimed that Metcalfe’s law was wrong.
Before we delve into the controversy, let’s define what Metcalfe’s law is, as well as its positive and negative aspects.
I first came across Metcalfe’s law back in the 1990s while getting my MSEE. Since my research area was large scale networks, including scalable WDMA, FDMA, and CDMA networks, I became familiar with Metcalfe’s law as a way to understand the impact of adding nodes.
Named after Robert Metcalfe, who was also the co-founder of the Ethernet, it states:
V = (n*n) where n is the number of nodes in the network and V is the value of the network
This is a simplification of the more accurate equation:
V = n * (n-1)
This equation tells us that if we have 2 nodes, A and B, we will also have 2 connections since A can connect with B and B can connect with A.
If we have nodes A, B, and C — then we have
