Modelling Node Connectivity in Dynamically Evolving Networks

Node connectivity is a key aspect of dynamically evolving networks. We address the problem of expressing, and constraining, node connectivity at a linguistic level. We extend the language KLAIM (Kernel Language for Agent Interaction and Mobility), that already provides primitives to explicitly configure the topology of networks, with the notion of clusters of nodes. This feature permits explicitly grouping nodes thus expressing, and constraining, their communication ability: two nodes can interact only if they are in the same cluster. Clusters can be used to model many real situations in a natural way and to easily express a number of basic properties of node connectivity, such as, e.g., locality and distribution of nodes, efficiency, and fault tolerance. However, they do not add expressive power to the language: to some extent, the extended language can be translated into the original one