Output details
13 - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Metallurgy and Materials
University of Birmingham : A - Electronic, Electrical and computer engineering
Fluctuation-induced traffic congestion in heterogeneous networks
This work was initiated by a question posed by the Nortel's Chief Network Architect for Europe and supported by three EPSRC grants. It proposed a novel theoretical model of congestion-induced failures in Internet-type networks. Such an approach had not been attempted previously due to the mathematical challenge posed. It predicts strong non-Gaussian loss fluctuations at the data loss phase transition, on a newly identified mesoscopic time-scale. The fluctuations, caused by noise in input traffic, are exacerbated by the network’s scale-free load distribution. The paper demonstrates that the current generation of transport protocols strongly overreacts to the first signs of congestion.
