A Nonlinear Competitive Model of Traffic Flows at Congested Links in Networks

This paper is concerned with the derivation of a qualitative model of source-link behaviour in congested networks. A nonlinear competitive model is proposed to capture the dynamics of capacity allocation at congested links. It is shown that, at a congested link, different sources can be considered as a "population" competing for the limited bandwidth according to their "aggressiveness", i.e. their desired transmission rates