Effects of symmetry on Braess-like paradoxes in distributed computer systems-a numerical study

Numerical examples of a Braess-like paradox in which adding capacity to a distributed computer system may degrade the performance of all users in the system have already been reported. Unlike the original Braess paradox, this behavior occurs only in the case of finitely many users and not in the case of infinite number of users in the models examined. This study examines a number of numerical examples around the Braess-like paradox such as above. The numerical examples suggest that the Braess-like paradox is stronger, i.e., the performance degradation of all users in the Brass-like paradox is larger when the system has a higher degree of symmetry and, in particular, is strongest in the completely symmetrical system whereby the parameter values describing each user are identical, which is against our previous intuition