Towards a Channel Capacity of Communication Networks

Abstract

We propose a new measure that quantifies the communication capabilities of networks. More precisely, in this paper we show that the well known channel capacity of a memoryless channel, introduced in information theory, can be defined for arbitrary directed networks. We argue that this new measure, which we call network channel capacity, might be useful for characterizing and classifying communication networks. As first examples we present results for random networks and discuss practical implications.