Visualizing large and clustered networks

Abstract

The need to visualize large and complex networks has strongly increased in the last decade. Although networks with more than 1000 vertices seem to be prohibitive for a comprehensive layout, real-world networks exhibit a very inhomogenous edge density that can be harnessed to derive an aesthetic and structured layout. Here, we will present a heuristic that finds a spanning tree with a very low average spanner property for the non-tree edges, the so-called backbone of a network. This backbone can then be used to apply a modified tree-layout algorithm to draw the whole graph in a way that highlights dense parts of the graph, so-called clusters, and their inter-connections. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.