Local routing protocols performance for computer virus elimination in complex networks

Although extensive research has been devoted to treat virus propagation over decades, the effect of local routing protocols algorithms on it has been ignored. In this paper, we studied the effectiveness of local routing protocols and their additional algorithms; next-nearest neighbors (NNN) and restrictive queue- length algorithm (RQL) in term of robustness in computer virus spreading. It is found that, the local routing protocols without additional algorithms favor the virus spreading, due to the blind transmission of packets between source and destination, while in local routing protocols under (NNN) algorithm, the virus propagation is reduced remarkably. Moreover in local routing protocols under RQL, the virus propagation continues to be reduced more and more compared with NNN algorithm. Furthermore our results show that the node duplication avoidance (NDA) algorithm favors the computer virus spreading especially in sparse networks. Moreover, in comparison with shortest path (SP) and efficient path (EP) global routing strategies ,local routing protocols under the restrictive queue- length algorithm (RQL), the virus propagation is highly reduced and becomes unexpectedly comparable to the traditional shortest path strategy and overcomes the efficient path strategy which shows a high vulnerability and sensitivity to computer virus propagation. These results could be very helpful for network routing protocols designers to give more attention to local routing strategies and their additional algorithms in order to benefit from high capacity and high level of security plus the adaptability with the large scale free networks as the internet.