Omori's law in the Internet traffic

Abstract

The Internet is a complex system, whose temporal behavior is highly nonstationary and exhibits sudden drastic changes regarded as main shocks or catastrophes. Here, analyzing a set of time series data of round-trip tim measured in echo experiment with the Ping Command, the property of "aftershocks" (i.e., catastrophes of smaller scales) after a main shock is studied. It is found that the aftershocks obey Omori's law. Thus, the Internet shares with earthquakes and financial market crashes a common scale-invariant feature in the temporal patterns of aftershocks.