Nonlinear Dynamics of Information Flow in Secure, Distributed Internet-Based Academic and Library Service Networks

Abstract

The increasingly interconnected repositories, cloud platforms, authentication services and information-access systems (IAS) of distributed Internet-based academic and library service networks introduce increasingly complex interactions between service demand and availability of resources, communication delay, and security disturbances. This paper suggests a nonlinear dynamical model to describe how information flows and is stable in such an environment. The model is a four-dimensional coupled state variable model of service load, response delay, availability of the resources, and security disturbance. Five operating scenarios are performed to evaluate the computational evaluation: normal operation, high load and moderate cyber threat, severe disturbance, and adaptive recovery. Equilibrium conditions and the analysis of the Jacobian eigenvalues are used to discuss the stability. The results indicate that the response time can be prolonged to 318ms when disturbances are severe, information-flow efficiency can be lowered to 86.9%, and negative stability margin of −0.03 can be generated. The adaptive recovery decreases the response time to 128 ms, increases the efficiency to 95.1% and restores the positive stability margin to 0.24.