The impact of neighboring infection on the computer virus spread in packets on scale-free networks

In this paper, we introduce the effect of neighbors on the infection of packets by computer virus in the SI and SIR models using the minimal traffic routing protocol. We have applied this model to the Barabasi-Albert network to determine how intrasite and extrasite infection rates affect virus propagation through the traffic flow of information packets in both the free-flow and the congested phases. The numerical results show that when we change the intrasite infection rate lambda(1) while keeping constant the extrasite infection rate lambda(2), we get normal behavior in the congested phase: in the network, the proportion of infected packets increases to reach a peak and then decreases resulting in a simultaneous increase of the recovered packets. In contrast, when the intrasite infection rate lambda(1) is kept fixed, an increase of the extrasite infection rate results in two regimes: The first one is characterized by an increase of the proportion of infected packets until reaching some peak value and then decreases smoothly. The second regime is characterized by an increase of infected packets to some stationary value.