title: Structural bottlenecks for communication in networks.
abstract: We consider the effect of network topology on the optimality of packet routing which is quantified by gammac, the rate of packet insertion beyond which congestion and queue growth occurs. We show that for any network, there exists an absolute upper bound, expressed in terms of vertex separators, for the scaling of gammac with network size N, irrespective of the static routing protocol used. We then derive an estimate to this upper bound for scale-free networks and introduce a static routing protocol, the "hub avoidance protocol," which, for large packet insertion rates, is superior to the shortest path routing protocol.
authors.affiliation: Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Sameet
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sreenivasan
authors.forename: Reuven
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: López
authors.forename: Zoltán
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Toroczkai
authors.forename: H Eugene
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Stanley