On computing the diameter of real-world directed (weighted) graphs

In this paper we propose a new algorithm for computing the diameter of directed unweighted graphs. Even though, in the worst case, this algorithm has complexity O(nm), where n is the number of nodes and m is the number of edges of the graph, we experimentally show that in practice our method works in O(m) time. Moreover, we show how to extend our algorithm to the case of directed weighted graphs and, even in this case, we present some preliminary very positive experimental results.