## 5 Experiments
### Experiment 3: Distribution and Recovery Time of Malicious Connections
Consequently, even nodes situated at the mean of the distribution are divided into two, leading to a halving (splitting factor equals two) of the amplitude of the distribution. The same stands for a splitting factor of 10, but instead, the amplitude in each epoch is divided by 10. Additionally, the number of nodes per epoch is increased according to the splitting factor. For example, when using a splitting factor of 2, epoch 4 only spans 6 nodes, while in the same epoch, 1000 nodes are spanned in the case of a splitting factor of 10. In the same vein, Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the resource utilization over time. Precisely, the \(x\)-axis represents the replica nodes encompassed by an epoch at its conclusion, while the \(y\)-axis denotes the pollution rate of each of these nodes. As with Figures 5 and 6, each vertical bar stands for a node. Regarding the splitting factor of 2, epochs 6 and 8 were magnified, while epochs 2 and 3 were selected in the case of a splitting factor of 10. This selection aims to assist readers in discerning the rate of nodes' increase over time, facilitating a comparison of resource utilization based on the splitting factor. It is clear that employing a splitting factor of 2 results in a gradual yet steady increase in the number of nodes per epoch. Specifically, regarding Figure 7, by the conclusion of epoch 6, only 18 nodes remain, whereas 63 nodes are present at the end of epoch 8. Conversely, when employing a splitting factor of 10, resource utilization escalates at a much faster pace. Particularly, epoch 2 ends with 27 nodes, while epoch 3 with 198 nodes, exceeding even the node count observed in epoch 8 with a splitting factor of 2. Figure 9 illustrates the resilience curve of the proposed scheme, with the \(x\)-axis denoting the percentage of the connections saved, and the \(y\)-axis indicating the time spent per epoch. Similarly to Figures 5 and 6, this figure applies to the scenario where the total number of connections was 10K, the pollution factor was 10%, while the employed strategy involved a static splitting factor equal to 2 and 10. With reference to Section 5.2, the particular scenarios were adroitly selected, as they were the best performers out of the static splitting factors in terms of resources and time, respectively. Figure 8: Snapshot of the distribution of malicious connections over replicas in selected epochs. This case considers a connections’ pool of 10K, a pollution factor of 10%, and a splitting factor of 10. (**a**) Epoch 2 out of 4; (**b**) Epoch 3 out of 4. Concerning a splitting factor of 2, the strategy requires a total of 14 epochs to reach a complete solution. Specifically, precisely half of the benign connections are preserved in the second epoch after 1.59 min, with over 80% of the malicious connections identified within roughly 10 min, as detailed in Table 6. Nevertheless, our method exhibits a decline in efficiency during the final four epochs, taking nearly an extra 35 min to attain complete recovery; or in other words, identifying the remaining 10% of malicious connections. Contrary to splitting factor of 2, the strategy that utilizes a factor of 10 only requires 4 epochs till achieving a full solution. This is rather anticipated, as the number of nodes per epoch increases much faster and the malicious connections are more speedily isolated. Particularly, 60% of the malicious connections are identified in only 1 min, while more than 80% of them are spotted in roughly 4 min, as depicted in Table 7. Similar to the splitting factor of 2, the rest of the malicious connections (10%) need considerably more time to be recognized, namely, an additional 25 min. _Takeaways:_ First, all static splitting factor strategies maintain a normal distribution of connections across replica nodes, but with varying dispersion of malicious connections across the replica nodes. A more targeted and efficient partitioning strategy could capitalize on the normal distribution attributes and handle its various zones accordingly.