2011/02/09 by Ming Tang, Tao Zhou · 68 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Bandwidth (computing) #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Computer network #Computer science #Distributed computing #Dynamic Source Routing #FIFO (computing and electronics) #Link-state routing protocol #Multipath routing #Network Traffic and Congestion Control #Network packet #Peer-to-Peer Network Technologies #Queueing theory #Routing (electronic design automation) #Routing protocol #Static routing #Telecommunications #The Internet #Throughput #Wireless #World Wide Web #cs.NI #physics.data-an
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.84.026116
published in Physical Review E 84(2), 026116 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2011/02/09 · openalex publication_date 2011/08/22 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 propose some efficient routing strategies that do not strictly obey the FIFO rule. Compared to the routine shortest-path strategy, throughput for both Barabási-Albert (BA) networks and the Internet can be improved by a factor of more than five. We calculate the theoretical limitation of the throughput. In BA networks, our proposed strategy can achieve 88% of the theoretical optimum, yet for the Internet, it is about 12%, implying that we still have a huge space to further improve the routing strategy for the Internet. Finally, we discuss possibly promising ways to design more efficient routing strategies for the Internet.