  Many applications produce massive complex networks whose analysis would
benefit from parallel processing. Parallel algorithms, in turn, often require a
suitable network partition. For solving optimization tasks such as graph
partitioning on large networks, multilevel methods are preferred in practice.
Yet, complex networks pose challenges to established multilevel algorithms, in
particular to their coarsening phase.
  One way to specify a (recursive) coarsening of a graph is to rate its edges
and then contract the edges as prioritized by the rating. In this paper we (i)
define weights for the edges of a network that express the edges' importance
for connectivity, (ii) compute a minimum weight spanning tree $T^m$ with
respect to these weights, and (iii) rate the network edges based on the
conductance values of $T^m$'s fundamental cuts. To this end, we also (iv)
develop the first optimal linear-time algorithm to compute the conductance
values of \emph{all} fundamental cuts of a given spanning tree. We integrate
the new edge rating into a leading multilevel graph partitioner and equip the
latter with a new greedy postprocessing for optimizing the maximum
communication volume (MCV). Experiments on bipartitioning frequently used
benchmark networks show that the postprocessing already reduces MCV by 11.3%.
Our new edge rating further reduces MCV by 10.3% compared to the previously
best rating with the postprocessing in place for both ratings. In total, with a
modest increase in running time, our new approach reduces the MCV of complex
network partitions by 20.4%.
