  The concept of scale-free networks has been widely applied across natural and
physical sciences. Many claims are made about the properties of these networks,
even though the concept of scale-free is often vaguely defined. We present
tools and procedures to analyse the statistical properties of networks defined
by arbitrary degree distributions and other constraints. Doing so reveals the
highly likely properties, and some unrecognised richness, of scale-free
networks, and casts doubt on some previously claimed properties being due to a
scale-free characteristic.
