For loads greater than about 80%, average age waveforms display a strong periodic tendency, as illustrated in figures 10(a) and (b).
This periodic behaviour is believed to arise from the fact that, at high
loads (
% for M = 100), every packet visits more-or-less every
cell in the course of its journey between source and destination and back.
This is a result of the fact that ( a) there are few cells which contain
no packet, which greatly limits the possible choices for each transfer, and
( b) the token visits all cells in turn before returning to its starting point.
We would expect the period to tend to 
as P tends to 
(which
is the largest P can be). For instance, for 95% load, the period, according to
figure 10(b), is about 9060 token passes ( c.f. 
).
Figure 10: (a) Average age against time plot for an M = 100 network with 95%
load, showing approximately periodic behaviour. (b) Autocorrelation function
of (a), showing that the period of the waveform is about 9060 token passes.