Role of connectivity in congestion and decongestion in networks

Abstract

We study network traffic dynamics in a two dimensional communication network with regular nodes and hubs. If the network experiences heavy message traffic, congestion occurs due to finite capacity of the nodes. We discuss strategies to manipulate hub capacity and hub connections to relieve congestion and define a coefficient of betweenness centrality (CBC), a direct measure of network traffic, which is useful for identifying hubs which are most likely to cause congestion. The addition of assortative connections to hubs of high CBC relieves congestion very efficiently.