by Suhan Ree

This is a C++ library for coevolving network dynamics with discrete-time and link delays. I built this library for my own research on network dynamics. At first, I started to make classes for graph representations and their manipulations, and used them on many possible network models and their simulations (as an example, see a model of for opinion dynamics in social networks at https://github.com/suhanree/OpinionNetwork.git).

Then I decided to make the code public as an open source project. To do that, I built a library containing all the classes I made for network simulations, and named it as CoNet, so that anybody can download the code and apply it to any network model that can be represented by this library.

I briefly describe possible systems, for which this library can be used, here.

• A system should have separate entities interacting each other, forming a network. In a network, separate entities are called nodes, while their relationships (or connections) are links.

• A system can be represented by many graph structures. For example, in a social network, there can be many types of coexisting relations like friendship, family, and so on. For each different relationship, we can assign different graphs with different properties. As a result, there can be many types of nodes and links in one system.

• Nodes and links can have their own states, and they can evolve with time interacting each other. We assume the time advances discretely one timestep at a time.

• Link structures (basically, which nodes links are attached to) can also evolve with time, and they can be influenced by node and link states.

• When nodes influence other nodes, they should be connected by links, and influence of one node can be delayed based on the property of links that are connected to that node (called link delay). Each link will have its own link delay value (it should be at least one timestep).

At first glance, the system description seems simple, but if we go further into the detail of dynamics, it can be quite complicated: for example, when we update states of nodes and links at each timestep, the update order can change the outcome of simulations. So we have to be careful when we define dynamic rules of the system.

Lastly, I should mention that the code is not complete yet, and that lots of algorithmic improvements can be made. One of the reason I opened this code to public is to make my research reproducible. Anybody who is interested in my work can download this code and reproduce results. In addition, if this library can help others to solve their own problems, it would make me much happier.

More detailed description of the library implementation and usage, and its possible models will be in separate documents.

To compile this C++ library, run 'make' at the root directory of this library (we assume it is set as an environment variable called $CONET). I only used features supported by C++03, and the default compiler is gcc. Then 'libconet.a' will be created at '$CONET/lib'. At this moment, there are two example codes at '$CONET/examples'.