Empirical study of the characteristics of Internet traffic

Abstract

Traffic engineering for packet-switched networks is important in terms of both network managements and future network managements and future network planning. A common methodology for traffic measurement should be established to facilitate understanding of the characteristics of individual networks. This paper describes the design and development of a system for measuring Internet traffic and the characteristics of this traffic. Results obtained with the system for the backbone traffic are given several parameters such as the number of packets, the volume of data transmitted, the connection time, the starting time, the connection interval and the number of retransmitted packets. Since it is proved that the above results are obtained from the backbone traffic, the proposed approach can be applied to the Internet in general.