Prospects for chaotic behaviour in networks

A preliminary investigation is being carried out, to determine the types of chaotic behaviour possible in digital communications systems (and in particular those based upon local area network architectures). So far, what has been studied is in fact a highly simplified and idealised version of the ALOHA protocol. This has been chosen not only to facilitate the work, but also because certain simplifications have to be made in order for chaotic behaviour to be feasible. Initial results indicate that chaos may be seen in systems operating on the threshold between bounded and unbounded queue lengths