Power of Networks

What makes WiFi faster at home than at a coffee shop? How does Google order search results? Why do Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube use fundamentally different rating and recommendation methods - and why does it matter? Is it really true that everyone on Facebook is connected in six steps or less? And how do cat videos - or anything else - go viral? The Power of Networks answers questions like these for the first time in a way that all of us can understand and use, whether at home, the office, or school. Using simple language, analogies, stories, and hundreds of illustrations, Christopher Brinton and Mung Chiang provide a smart but accessible introduction to the handful of big ideas that drive the technical and social networks we use every day - from cellular phone networks and cloud computing to the Internet and social media platforms. The Power of Networks unifies these ideas through six fundamental principles of networking, which explain the difficulties in sharing network resources efficiently, how crowds can be wise or not-so-wise depending on the nature of their connections, how there are many building-blocks of layers in a network, and more.