Macroscopic Dynamics in Large-Scale Data Networks

Abstract

Modern society grows increasingly reliant on the Internet, a network of global reach that supports many services and clients. However, in such a large-scale distributed network, meeting quality-of-service requirements presents a difficult challenge because hotspots of network load move around and traffic anomalies arise unpredictably in space and time. In this chapter, we will demonstrate that observing network dynamics at a macroscopic level is likely to contribute to better network engineering and management.