 In a ring with radius 1, each agent is connected with just its immediate neighbors on each side. Using an inertia of 50% and a “shaking hand” interval of 8 on a 100-point landscape, 50 agents in that configuration converge on the global maximum in the “needle in the haystack” landscape in 66% of simulation runs. If agents are connected to the two closest neighbors on each side, results drop immediately to 50% of runs in which agents find the global maximum. A small world network can be envisaged as a ring in which agents have a certain probability of “rewiring”: breaking an existing link and establishing another one to some other agent at random (Watts &amp; Strogatz 1998). If each of 50 agents has a 9% probability of rewiring, the success rate of small worlds drops to 55%. Wheels and hubs have a 42% and 37% success rate, respectively. Random networks with a 10% probability of connection between any two nodes score at 47%. The worst performing communication network on a “needle in a haystack” landscape is the “internet of science” of a complete network in which everyone instantly sees everyone else’s result.