Packet Transport on Scale Free Networks

TL;DR

This paper models information packet transport on scale-free networks, revealing long-range correlations, power-law transit times, and dynamic queueing behavior influenced by network geometry and input rates.

Contribution

It introduces a new model of packet transport with local search algorithms and analyzes its kinetic properties through simulations.

Findings

Long-range correlations in packet density and activity bursts

Power-law distribution of transit times

Average transit time increases with network size

Abstract

We introduce a model of information packet transport on networks in which the packets are posted by a given rate and move in parallel according to a local search algorithm. By performing a number of simulations we investigate the major kinetic properties of the transport as a function of the network geometry, the packet input rate and the buffer size. We find long-range correlations in the power spectra of arriving packet density and the network's activity bursts. The packet transit time distribution shows a power-law dependence with average transit time increasing with network size. This implies dynamic queueing on the network, in which many interacting queues are mutually driven by temporally correlated packet streams.