Metcalfe's law

networkingops culture

The value of a network grows with the square of its number of connected users.

Attributed to Ethernet co-inventor Robert Metcalfe and popularized in the 1990s, the law captures why networks tip: each new node adds links to every existing node. Economists have argued the true exponent is gentler (Odlyzko proposed n log n), but the qualitative point survived every critique. It is the one-line explanation for network effects, platform lock-in, and why the fax machine only mattered once everyone had one.

← All glossary entries