Ising Model for Priority Routing Control of Packet Flow

An Ising model is proposed for a packet routing control with priority links for computer networks within a framework of statistical physics. An energy function for the Ising model is defined in order to express competition among a queue length and a distance from a node, where a packet exists, to a destination node of that packet. We use a mean-field approximation for the system in order to introduce soft control of packet flow. A dynamics for the thermal average of an Ising spin in terms of a mean field approximation is introduced in order to make the mean-field energy decrease as a function of time. By computer simulations with discrete time steps, we show that the control of sending packets through the priority links is possible by using the proposed model. We compare the obtained results with those by using a neural network model in Ref.[8].