Do-it-yourself Networks: A Multi-layer Network Approach to the Analysis of Mobile User Egocentric and Sociocentric Behaviors

Abstract

Do-it-yourself (DIY) networking is emerging as a new communication paradigm dealing with the creation of local wireless networks outside the public Internet. This paper analyzes six mobility traces for DIY networks containing both wireless interactions and online friendships. Through an approach based on multi-layer social networks, we analyze some fundamental aspects of these social-driven networks: egocentric and sociocentric node centrality. We show that online and offline degree centralities are significantly correlated on most datasets. On the contrary, betweenness, closeness and eigenvector centralities show medium-low correlation values.