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.
Let be the rate of each individual flow on route , so its aggregate rate is . The feasible allocations satisfy . An allocation has proportional fairness if, for every feasible ,
Equivalently it maximizes over positive active-route rates. This is the first-order optimality condition for a concave objective on a convex set. Rates for absent flows can be set to zero.
For the linear flow network, put and . If , unused capacity on link could increase , so
When , write . For active local routes their aggregate rates are , and the objective, up to constants independent of , is
For , differentiation gives , hence ; when the maximizing endpoint is , giving the same answer. Thus the proportionally fair allocation on a linear flow network is
If and , this gives on every active local route, as expected. No departure occurs at the empty state.
Independent Poisson processes of flow arrivals and independent exponential distributions of document sizes make the count vector a continuous-time Markov chain. By the memoryless property, a surviving residual size with exponential distribution still has rate per unit of transferred data, so each route- flow completes at instantaneous rate . The transition intensities are
Hence the through-route departure rate is and each active local route's rate is .
To obtain the stationary law of a linear flow network, define
For a through departure ; for an active local departure . These are exactly the aggregate service rates, so the detailed balance identities hold. This also shows why the binomial coefficient is essential; a factor would not have the required ratios.
For fixed local counts with total , the negative binomial series gives
Sum the remaining independent geometric series to find
The given load conditions make every series converge. Setting proves
The chain has bounded total departure rate, finite arrival rate and no explosion. With positive arrival rates it is irreducible, and this normalized invariant law gives the positive recurrent Markov chain property; zero arrival rates restrict the stationary support to the corresponding reachable class.
Summing out shows local-count independence in a linear flow network: the local counts have independent geometric distributions on with ratios . Therefore
They are independent of one another under the stationary marginal, despite sharing the random through-flow population. The through count is generally dependent on them.