14,481 research outputs found
A critical look at power law modelling of the Internet
This paper takes a critical look at the usefulness of power law models of the
Internet. The twin focuses of the paper are Internet traffic and topology
generation. The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly it summarises the state of
the art in power law modelling particularly giving attention to existing open
research questions. Secondly it provides insight into the failings of such
models and where progress needs to be made for power law research to feed
through to actual improvements in network performance.Comment: To appear Computer Communication
The Dynamics of Internet Traffic: Self-Similarity, Self-Organization, and Complex Phenomena
The Internet is the most complex system ever created in human history.
Therefore, its dynamics and traffic unsurprisingly take on a rich variety of
complex dynamics, self-organization, and other phenomena that have been
researched for years. This paper is a review of the complex dynamics of
Internet traffic. Departing from normal treatises, we will take a view from
both the network engineering and physics perspectives showing the strengths and
weaknesses as well as insights of both. In addition, many less covered
phenomena such as traffic oscillations, large-scale effects of worm traffic,
and comparisons of the Internet and biological models will be covered.Comment: 63 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables, submitted to Advances in Complex
System
Global Modeling and Prediction of Computer Network Traffic
We develop a probabilistic framework for global modeling of the traffic over
a computer network. This model integrates existing single-link (-flow) traffic
models with the routing over the network to capture the global traffic
behavior. It arises from a limit approximation of the traffic fluctuations as
the time--scale and the number of users sharing the network grow. The resulting
probability model is comprised of a Gaussian and/or a stable, infinite variance
components. They can be succinctly described and handled by certain
'space-time' random fields. The model is validated against simulated and real
data. It is then applied to predict traffic fluctuations over unobserved links
from a limited set of observed links. Further, applications to anomaly
detection and network management are briefly discussed
Traffic measurement and analysis
Measurement and analysis of real traffic is important to gain knowledge
about the characteristics of the traffic. Without measurement, it is
impossible to build realistic traffic models. It is recent that data
traffic was found to have self-similar properties. In this thesis work
traffic captured on the network at SICS and on the Supernet, is shown to
have this fractal-like behaviour. The traffic is also examined with
respect to which protocols and packet sizes are present and in what
proportions. In the SICS trace most packets are small, TCP is shown to be
the predominant transport protocol and NNTP the most common application.
In contrast to this, large UDP packets sent between not well-known ports
dominates the Supernet traffic. Finally, characteristics of the client
side of the WWW traffic are examined more closely. In order to extract
useful information from the packet trace, web browsers use of TCP and HTTP
is investigated including new features in HTTP/1.1 such as persistent
connections and pipelining. Empirical probability distributions are
derived describing session lengths, time between user clicks and the
amount of data transferred due to a single user click. These probability
distributions make up a simple model of WWW-sessions
Long-term power-law fluctuation in Internet traffic
Power-law fluctuation in observed Internet packet flow are discussed. The
data is obtained by a multi router traffic grapher (MRTG) system for 9 months.
The internet packet flow is analyzed using the detrended fluctuation analysis.
By extracting the average daily trend, the data shows clear power-law
fluctuations. The exponents of the fluctuation for the incoming and outgoing
flow are almost unity. Internet traffic can be understood as a daily periodic
flow with power-law fluctuations.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Fluctuation-driven capacity distribution in complex networks
Maximizing robustness and minimizing cost are common objectives in the design
of infrastructure networks. However, most infrastructure networks evolve and
operate in a highly decentralized fashion, which may significantly impact the
allocation of resources across the system. Here, we investigate this question
by focusing on the relation between capacity and load in different types of
real-world communication and transportation networks. We find strong empirical
evidence that the actual capacity of the network elements tends to be similar
to the maximum available capacity, if the cost is not strongly constraining. As
more weight is given to the cost, however, the capacity approaches the load
nonlinearly. In particular, all systems analyzed show larger unoccupied
portions of the capacities on network elements subjected to smaller loads,
which is in sharp contrast with the assumptions involved in (linear) models
proposed in previous theoretical studies. We describe the observed behavior of
the capacity-load relation as a function of the relative importance of the cost
by using a model that optimizes capacities to cope with network traffic
fluctuations. These results suggest that infrastructure systems have evolved
under pressure to minimize local failures, but not necessarily global failures
that can be caused by the spread of local damage through cascading processes
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