Linear flow network 2026-10-06
A linear flow network has a through route using all resources and one local route for each individual resource. Under proportional fairness with unit resource capacities, the per-flow through rate is , where is the total number of flows. Its exponential-document model has a balance function of a flow-level network given by .
For active-route per-flow rates , feasibility means for every resource. The defining condition for a proportionally fair allocation is that every feasible alternative satisfies
This is equivalent to maximizing weighted logarithmic utility over the feasible set. Its gradient is , so the displayed inequality is precisely the first-order condition for this concave function. Strict concavity gives unique active-flow rates. Routes with have no utility term or actual per-flow rate to determine; set their aggregate service to zero. This is the inactive routes in proportional fairness convention.
Abbreviate the route populations as in cyclic order and let denote aggregate route service. The resource constraints are
Equivalently, . Fix these two maxima as . Because utility is increasing in each active allocation, every active odd route attains and every active even route attains . Dropping terms constant in the populations, the objective becomes
If both groups are nonempty, the maximum has and derivative , giving . If one group is empty, every route in the other group gets aggregate service one. For , all cases are summarized, on active routes, by
At there are no flows and all aggregate services are zero. In particular whenever , as printed in the PDF. The per-flow rate is not generally : opposite routes can use the same resource capacities in parallel.
An exponential document size with parameter has completion hazard when a flow is served at rate . Summing over its flows gives the transition rates
Thus an active odd route departs at rate , and an active even route at rate . An empty route has departure rate zero even if its opposite route is populated.
Put and
For an active odd route and an active even route respectively,
Hence aggregate service is the neighboring-state ratio of this balance function of a flow-level network. Consider weights . For every birth edge,
These are detailed balance equations. The total departure rate is bounded by and total arrival rate by , so the process is nonexplosive. Provided the normalizing sum is finite, its stationary distribution is therefore
The large parentheses in the original PDF represent a binomial coefficient, not a ratio. The verified adjacent-state ratios explain why that distinction matters.
The required stability condition can be established directly from the normalizing sum. Set , and . Grouping opposite-route counts gives
If and , then , with the same bounds for the other group. Restriction to the routes attaining the maxima bounds below by . If , the upper bound is at most , which converges. Thus
Equivalently every resource's offered load is strictly below its unit capacity. With positive arrival rates the irreducible chain then has the unique stationary probability distribution above. Without this condition the weights remain an invariant measure but are not normalizable; the question's probability-distribution claim implicitly needs this hypothesis.
For completeness, the normalizing constant has the four-cycle partition function expression
To derive it when and , substitute into the double sum and use . The resulting expression is
which simplifies to the displayed formula. Continuity within the stability region covers equal opposite loads and zero loads.
Only routes with need a per-flow rate: absent flows contribute no utility and have no completion events. Interpret the proportional-change sum and the logarithmic objective on these active routes. With positive capacities and finitely many nonempty routes, a strictly positive feasible active-rate vector exists. Define its weighted logarithmic utility by , with value if an active rate is zero.
For positive feasible , the elementary concavity inequality gives
The last sum is nonpositive by proportional fairness. Feasible competitors with a zero active rate have utility , so they cannot improve it either. Thus a proportionally fair allocation maximizes weighted logarithmic utility. Conversely, if maximizes this utility, the feasible line segment has nonpositive right derivative at , giving precisely . This also covers a competitor with zero coordinates, since stays positive for sufficiently small . The strictly concave function makes the active-rate optimizer unique.
For the linear flow network, put and . If and resource is not saturated, its local per-flow rate could be increased without affecting any other resource. This would strictly increase weighted logarithmic utility. Hence
If and , substitute on all active local routes into the utility. The terms depending on are
Its derivative vanishes when , so . Its second derivative is negative, giving the unique maximizer. If , utility increases up to the capacity endpoint . If , each active local route uses its entire local resource. Altogether the proportionally fair allocation on a linear flow network is
Absent-route rates may be set to zero, and departures are zero at the empty state . Notice that these are per-flow rates: the aggregate through service is , while each active local route gets aggregate service .
In the document-transfer flow-level network model, let be the unit vector for route . Independent Poisson processes of flow arrivals give transitions at rate . An active document on route receives service at rate and has an exponential distribution of size with parameter . By the memoryless property, its instantaneous completion rate is . Summing over the active documents gives the continuous-time Markov chain intensities
Thus through-route departures have rate , and active local departures have rate . All other off-diagonal intensities vanish. The diagonal intensity is the negative of the sum of the outgoing intensities. Each route's aggregate service is at most one, so the total jump rate is bounded by ; the process is a nonexplosive continuous-time Markov chain.
Set , assume , and define the balance function of a flow-level network by
The adjacent-state ratios of this binomial coefficient are
They equal the aggregate service rates just obtained. Therefore, with ,
These are the detailed balance for a continuous-time Markov chain equations on every adjacent pair. Summing incoming and outgoing pairs proves stationarity whenever the weights can be normalized. Hence the stationary law of a linear flow network is
The coefficient here is a binomial coefficient, not merely the total number of flows. Both it and the denominator in are visible in the original PDF but missing from the converted TeX.
We can also determine exactly when the normalizing constant is finite. For , summing first over with local counts fixed and applying the negative binomial series gives
The remaining sums are independent geometric series. Thus
provided for every . These inequalities are also necessary: if , the states with every local count zero already give a divergent sum; otherwise any local ratio at least one makes its geometric series diverge. Thus the stationary formula requires strict offered load below capacity at every resource. With positive arrival rates, the process is irreducible, and these normalizable detailed balance weights give its unique stationary distribution. Outside these inequalities, the displayed weights are not a probability distribution. Zero arrival rates can be handled on the reachable class by setting the corresponding population to zero.
For a network with link-route incidence matrix , a per-flow rate vector is feasible when and for every resource. A proportionally fair allocation has strictly positive rates on active routes and satisfies
for every feasible competing allocation . Equivalently it maximizes the weighted logarithmic utility subject to the capacity constraints. The equivalence follows from the first-order condition for this concave objective; strict concavity gives uniqueness on active routes. Rates on absent routes have no operational effect and may be set to zero.
Use labels for the routes , and put , , , , . The two-resource linear flow network has constraints
When and , write for aggregate through service. Every active local route uses the remainder of its resource, since increasing its rate increases utility. Up to additive constants, the objective becomes . Its derivative is , so its unique maximum is . This argument remains valid if only one local route is active: the unused local resource adds only the constraint . The resulting proportionally fair allocation on a two-resource linear network is
If , each active local route receives its resource equally, or , as the same formulas prescribe. If , only the through route is active and . At all rates may be set to zero. In particular no displayed expression is applied to an absent route with a zero denominator.
For independent Poisson processes of flow arrivals and independent exponential document sizes of parameters , the memoryless property makes a continuous-time Markov chain. Each active flow completes with instantaneous rate , so the flow-level network model has transitions
Thus for the aggregate service rates are
They vanish at the empty state. The total transition rate is bounded by , so the process is nonexplosive.
Put and define the balance function of a flow-level network
The elementary binomial coefficient ratios are
Hence whenever that departure is possible. Weights satisfy detailed balance for a continuous-time Markov chain, since
When summable they therefore give the stationary law of a two-resource linear flow network,
It remains to determine exactly when these weights normalize. First, summing only the terms requires . For such , the negative binomial series, or the supplied identity with parameter , gives
All weights are nonnegative, so the Tonelli theorem permits this order of summation. The normalizing sum is then
The two geometric series converge precisely under the stability conditions for a two-resource linear flow network, and evaluating them yields
These are exactly the strict offered-load constraints on the two unit-capacity resources; equality already makes a geometric sum diverge. For positive arrival rates the chain is irreducible, so the normalized law is its unique stationary probability and the chain is positive recurrent. Nonnegative arrival rates are also allowed with in the weights: a zero-arrival route is absent in the closed stationary class, and the same normalization conditions and formula remain valid there.
Here is the rate per individual active flow, and is its route's aggregate rate. On routes with , a proportionally fair allocation is a feasible positive rate vector satisfying
for every feasible competitor , where feasibility means . This is equivalent to maximizing weighted logarithmic utility : its gradient gives the displayed inequality, and the supporting-tangent inequality proves sufficiency. The objective is strictly concave on active rates. Rates assigned to absent flows are irrelevant and may be set to zero.
For the linear flow network, an active local route can increase its rate if its link constraint has slack, improving the objective without affecting any other link. Thus
Put and . If and , eliminate the active local rates by . Up to constants, the utility becomes
Its derivative is , which vanishes exactly at
Strict concavity proves this is the optimum, and unused local links impose no stronger constraint because . If , maximizing gives , the same formula. If , each active local route has . These are the proportionally fair allocation on a linear flow network. When , there is no service to allocate.
The memoryless property of exponential document sizes makes a flow transmitting at rate complete with intensity . Summing over its flows gives the flow-level network model transition rates
and, for nonempty states,
All absent-route departure intensities, including those at the empty state, are zero. In particular the local completion rate is the aggregate rate , not . Total rates are bounded by , so the continuous-time Markov chain is nonexplosive.
Set and consider the weights
The binomial coefficient is the balance function of a flow-level network. For a through-route arrival, its adjacent-weight ratio is
The reverse departure rate is , so . For a local-route arrival,
and the reverse departure rate is , giving the same detailed balance identity. This includes arrivals from the empty state.
To normalize, first fix all local counts and sum over . The negative binomial series gives
The remaining geometric series factor, so
This is finite precisely under the stated strict load inequalities for each resource. Thus detailed balance proves the stationary law of a linear flow network:
With positive arrival rates this is the unique stationary distribution of the irreducible chain. Zero arrival rates are handled by restricting to the accessible class with their counts zero, interpreting .
Summing this distribution over gives local-count independence in a linear flow network:
These are independent geometric distributions. Differentiating a geometric series, or summing its mean directly, gives
This independence concerns the local counts at one stationary time; their evolving processes share the through route and are not independent processes.
A feasible per-flow allocation satisfies for each active route and . It has proportional fairness if every feasible competitor obeys
By the first-order inequality for the strictly concave logarithm, this is equivalent to maximizing weighted logarithmic utility over the feasible allocations. Inactive-route rates are immaterial; set them to zero as a convention.
Write , , , and . The capacity constraints are and . For , put . Each active local route uses its remaining capacity . Omitting constants, the utility is
Its maximum has ; when , the maximum is the endpoint . Hence for active routes
These formulas also give and when . When there is no allocated service. Equivalently, the aggregate route rates for are
This is the proportionally fair allocation on a two-resource linear network for a two-resource linear flow network.
For independent Poisson processes of documents and independent document sizes with exponential distribution of rate , the memorylessness of the exponential distribution makes the population a continuous-time Markov chain. Its transition intensities are
The departure intensity sums the independent completion hazards . There is no departure on an inactive route. Set , with .
To prove the proposed stationary distribution, define the balance function of a flow-level network
For an active local route, , while for the through route this ratio is . Thus . The weights
satisfy detailed balance on every arrival-departure pair:
Each total jump rate is bounded by , so the chain is a nonexplosive Markov chain; normalized detailed-balance weights therefore give its stationary distribution, the stationary law of a two-resource linear flow network.
Use the negative binomial series to sum first over :
The remaining two geometric series give
All summands are nonnegative. Consequently the sum is finite exactly under the stability conditions for a two-resource linear flow network
These say that the offered load on each unit-capacity resource is strictly below one. Equality is insufficient: at least one geometric series then diverges. If all arrival rates are positive, the chain is irreducible and the normalizable law is its unique equilibrium law.
Finally put , . Summing over yields
Thus the two local-route counts are independent, each with geometric distribution on the nonnegative integers. The conditional through-route count has negative binomial distribution
For positive traffic rates this depends on the local counts, so all three route counts are not independent. More quantitatively, , and likewise for . If zero arrival rates are allowed, the exceptional independent cases are , or , when the relevant counts are deterministic zero. This distinction is local-count independence with through-flow dependence.
Only routes with contribute to proportional fairness or to the weighted logarithmic utility; omit inactive routes from expressions with a rate in the denominator. Active routes have positive rates whenever a positive feasible allocation exists. For a feasible competitor , the elementary logarithm inequality gives
A zero competitor rate on an active route has utility and also cannot improve the objective. Therefore a proportionally fair allocation maximizes the logarithmic objective. Conversely, the feasible set is a convex set, and differentiating the objective along at shows that an optimizer satisfies the proportional fairness inequality. Strict concavity gives uniqueness on active coordinates; rates assigned to nonexistent flows are immaterial.
In the linear flow network, put and for active routes. A local route uses only resource . If and , increasing increases the objective without violating any other constraint. Thus each active local route saturates its resource:
Write and . For and , substitute into the objective. Apart from constants its dependence on is
Its derivative vanishes when , and its second derivative is negative. Hence the per-flow through-route rate is
If , the optimal through-route aggregate rate is one, so still holds. If , each active local route has , also given by the displayed local formula. When there are no flows and no departures. Inactive coordinates need not be assigned these undefined per-flow formulas.
Independent arrivals and exponential document sizes make this a flow-level network model. A document of type has residual-size hazard per unit of data transmitted; when its transmission speed is , its completion hazard per unit time is . Thus the continuous-time Markov chain of flow counts has transition intensities
For these departure intensities are for the through route and for an active local route. Total arrival intensity is constant and total departure intensity is bounded by , ensuring a nonexplosive Markov chain.
Set , the offered traffic, and define the balance function of a flow-level network
The binomial coefficients satisfy
These identities also cover states with only one kind of active route. They show that the weight satisfies
Thus detailed balance for a continuous-time Markov chain proves that this is a reversible Markov chain and reduces the stationary distribution calculation to normalization.
Sum over first. The negative binomial series gives, for fixed local counts and ,
All summands are nonnegative, so the Tonelli theorem permits exchanging the sums. The partition sum is therefore
It is finite exactly when for every , for . These are the resource-load conditions: resource receives the through-route offered traffic plus its local offered traffic. The normalized stationary distribution is
With positive arrival rates this is the unique stationary distribution of the irreducible feasible flow-count chain. Zero arrival rates restrict its closed class to the corresponding zero coordinates.
Summing out also shows that the local counts are independent, with geometric distributions on :
Hence their mean flow counts are
The binomial balance factor is essential: independent geometric counts for all routes would not give these departure rates or the correct resource-load normalization.
For route offered loads , the balance function of a flow-level network gives the stationary distribution
The negative binomial series sums over , and two geometric sums give under the stability conditions for a two-resource linear flow network.