  It is known that many networks modeling real-life complex systems are
small-word (large local clustering and small diameter) and scale-free (power
law of the degree distribution), and very often they are also hierarchical.
Although most of the models are based on stochastic methods, some deterministic
constructions have been recently proposed, because this allows a better
computation of their properties. Here a new deterministic family of
hierarchical networks is presented, which generalizes most of the previous
proposals, such as the so-called binomial tree. The obtained graphs can be seen
as graphs on alphabets (where vertices are labeled with words of a given
alphabet, and the edges are defined by a specific rule relating different
words). This allows us the characterization of their main distance-related
parameters, such as the radius and the diameter. Moreover, as a by product, an
efficient shortest-path local algorithm is proposed.
