Cellular automaton modeling of computer network Original Research Article

The dramatically increasing growth of computer network has brought us more and more complex systems that reveals plenty of nonlinear complex phenomena. On the other hand, cellular automaton model used to be in the study of a variety of nonlinear and spatially extended systems. This paper proposes a simplified cellular model for computer network, namely the NaSch network model, which is originated at the NaSch model of road traffic. Typically, the NaSch network model is a one-dimension cellular automaton and consists of two kinds of cells, i.e. node cell and link cell. In this paper, the node cell stands for switch nodes in computer network, such as routers and switchers, while the link cell is the abstract of the lines of communication among these switch nodes. The simulation results show that this model indeed captures some of properties of flux of computer networks. The space–time plots illustrate that the randomization in this modeling plays an important role in the emerging of self-organization of congestion. It also demonstrates that the density of packet is another key factor to having influence on congestion. On the contrary, the boundary condition has few contribution to our model.