The direct neighborhood of a particular vertex, m, may have enough important information to conduct a conclusive analysis for the node. The ego-center, or egonet, is based on this idea. An egonet of a particular vertex, m, consists of all the vertices directly connected to m plus node m itself. The node m is called the ego and the one-hop neighbors it is connected to are called alters.

The ego network of a particular node, 3, is shown in the following graph:

Note that the egonet represents one degree neighborhood. This concept can be extended to n-degree neighborhoods, which consist of all the vertices n-hop away from the vertex of interest.