The effect of TTL on the information traffic

In real communication protocols, the information packets have a finite Time-to-Live (TTL) to avoid the waste of network resources, such as infinite loop induced by routing error or too long transferring time. In this paper, we introduce TTL into the information traffic model on Barabási–Albert scale-free networks under local routing strategy and focus on its effect on the network capacity measured by the critical point (RcRc) of phase transition from free flow to congestion. Simulations show that the network capacity and the communication velocity are improved. However, some packets are dropped before they arrived at destinations. It is found that the share of successfully arrived packets monotonously increases with the increment of TTL and it is considerably acceptable if TTL is not very small. We also examine the effect of TTL on the positive-feedback preference (PFP) internet model and the results are alike. Our work may be helpful in quantifying the effect of packet lifetime in real communication networks and in routing strategy designing.