Net Traffic Shocks Mimic Earthquakes

belphegor writes "Technology Research News is running an article describing research linking the similarties between Earthquakes and Internet traffic. By pinging hosts across the network, researchers 'were able to measure frequent changes in Internet congestion...results showed that the Internet, like the earth's network of faults, exhibits criticality -- a condition of sudden and drastic change. "Sudden drastic congestion leads to a large value of the round trip time of the ping signal, which is identified with a main shock," said Abe. The researchers referred to these sudden, drastic traffic changes as Internetquakes.' They also saw 'aftershocks' that can be mathematically described in a similar manner to the seismic ones more familiar to many Californians."

Comments

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[WEFUNK]

Another book that is more directly related to this behavior is Per Bak's "How Nature Works". Bak demonstrates how many systems in nature, including earthquakes, highway traffic, and evolution, are governed by very similar power laws and he proposes that these systems naturally evolve to a state of "self organized criticality" as is mentioned in the article.

A simplistic model that he uses to describe this principle is a conical pile of sand that is built up by dropping one particle at a time. The pile will build and build and then experience surface avalanches apparently set off by only a single piece of additional sand. The frequency and size of these also follow the same type of power law. Self organized criticality is really a updated version of catastrophe theory and theories involving constraints. I'm still not sure if Wolfram has really shed any new light on this area, but some of his work might be used to explore the fundamental cause behind this apparently common principle.

I believe that some of these ideas are already used quite practically. For instance, knowledge that traffic jams can be caused without any external cause (accidents etc.) can provide insight into whether changing speed limits or adding additional lanes can ease congestion (or worsen it). Models and simulations can be built and sometimes the answers are found to be contrary to common sense.

There is great article about him in WIred

[iamr00t]

Right here

Although it's pretty vague like many Wired non-technical articles.

But i find it amusing to see a person spend 10 years on such idea while running a company.
Also talks about his life, pretty interesting :)

Re:For instance

[Quietust]

Here's a few I found after doing a Google search for backhoe "internet backbone":

• Backhoe Event Cuts East Coast Internet Artery
• Unscheduled Outages Monday March 27

Given a bit more searching (and better search terms), I could probably come up with a bunch, including the one that hit Internic a while ago (resulting in a massive 4 hour net-wide outage).