title: Traffic of particles in complex networks.
abstract: The study of the information flow through communication networks, such as the Internet, is of great importance. In the Internet, information flows in discrete units ("packets"), and the capacity of storage and processing of information of computers is finite. Thus if there are many packets walking on the network at the same time, they will interfere with each other. To understand this, we propose an idealized model, in which many particles move randomly on the network, and the nodes support limited numbers of particles. The maximum number of packets supported by a node can be any positive integer, and can be different for each node. We analyze the statistical properties of this model, obtaining analytical expressions for the mean occupation of each node, for different network topologies. The analytical results are shown to be in agreement with numerical simulations.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 66318, 05315-970 São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. rgermano@if.usp.br
authors.forename: Renato
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Germano
authors.forename: Alessandro P S
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: de Moura