System-Wide Termination in Distributed Betweenness Centrality Computation

Abstract

Computing betweenness centrality on large networks is inherently expensive, as it requires aggregating shortest-path dependencies across all pairs of vertices and becomes increasingly difficult to scale as network size grows. Scalable distributed algorithms can facilitate such computations, particularly when centralised processing is not feasible, and message exchanges must be carefully controlled, for example, in bandwidth-limited or very large-scale networks. However, existing distributed betweenness centrality implementations do not integrate a lightweight, system-wide termination detector. As a consequence, this can lead to extra messaging after local convergence or, if misconfigured, premature stops. In this work, a lightweight, system-wide global termination detection algorithm for this task is presented. The proposed method enables vertices to decide locally when the overall system has converged. The method is evaluated against a local stopping strategy in which vertices terminate individually once their own estimates stabilise. To compare these two approaches, namely global termination detection and local stopping, a custom Python simulator is implemented, and both approaches are tested on synthetic (Erdos-Renyi and geometric) and real (Email and Road) network topologies. Our results show that system-wide termination detection lets vertices stop safely after detecting global convergence, as indicated by zero final error in the evaluated networks, rather than stopping independently based only on local convergence. The local stopping approach, on the other hand, results in premature termination and some errors on heterogeneous networks. This work emphasises the need for coordinated halting in distributed centrality computation.