  We study quantum transport on finite discrete structures and we model the
process by means of continuous-time quantum walks. A direct and effective
comparison between quantum and classical walks can be attained based on the
average displacement of the walker as a function of time. Indeed, a fast growth
of the average displacement can be advantageously exploited to build up
efficient search algorithms. By means of analytical and numerical
investigations, we show that the finiteness and the inhomogeneity of the
substrate jointly weaken the quantum walk performance. We further highlight the
interplay between the quantum-walk dynamics and the underlying topology by
studying the temporal evolution of the transfer probability distribution and
the lower bound of long time averages.
