Efficient routing strategies in scale-free networks with limited bandwidth

TL;DR

This paper proposes non-FIFO routing strategies in scale-free networks that significantly increase throughput, achieving up to 88% of the theoretical maximum in BA networks and highlighting potential for further improvements in real Internet routing.

Contribution

It introduces new routing strategies that drop FIFO rules, substantially improving network throughput over traditional shortest path methods.

Findings

Throughput increased more than five times compared to shortest path routing.

Achieved 88% of the theoretical maximum throughput in BA networks.

Potential for further improvements in real Internet routing strategies.

Abstract

We study the traffic dynamics in complex networks where each link is assigned a limited and identical bandwidth. Although the first-in-first-out (FIFO) queuing rule is widely applied in the routing protocol of information packets, here we argue that if we drop this rule, the overall throughput of the network can be remarkably enhanced. We proposed some efficient routing strategies that do not strictly obey the FIFO rule. Comparing with the routine shortest path strategy, the throughput for both Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) networks and the real Internet, the throughput can be improved more than five times. We calculate the theoretical limitation of the throughput. In BA networks, our proposed strategy can achieve 88% of the theoretical optimum, yet for the real Internet, it is about 12%, implying that we have a huge space to further improve the routing strategy for the real Internet. Finally we discuss possibly promising ways to design more efficient routing strategies for the Internet.