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A Nonstationary Poisson View of Internet Traffic. Thomas Karagiannis joint work with Mart Molle, Michalis Faloutsos, Andre Broido. What is the nature of Internet traffic?. The fundamental question How does Internet traffic look like? Two competing models
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A Nonstationary Poisson View of Internet Traffic Thomas Karagiannis joint work with Mart Molle, Michalis Faloutsos, Andre Broido
What is the nature of Internet traffic? • The fundamental question • How does Internet traffic look like? • Two competing models • Poisson and independence assumption • Kleinrock (1976) • Self-similarity, Long-Range Dependence, heavy tails • Revolutionized modeling • Poisson has largely been discredited
The Poisson assumption may still be applicable ! • We revisit the question: LRD or Poisson? • We focus on Internet core • Things may have changed: massive scale and multiplexing • Our observations: • Packet arrivals appear Poisson and independent • We observe nonstationarity at multi-second time scales • Traffic exhibits LRD properties at scales of seconds and above • Our conjecture: Traffic as a nonstationary Poisson process? • This view appears to reconcile the multifaceted behavior
Background: Self-similarity and LRD • Self-similarity opens new horizons in traffic modeling • On the Self-Similar Nature of Ethernet Traffic. (1994) • W. E. Leland, M. S. Taqqu, W. Willinger, and D. V. Wilson. • Wide Area Traffic: The Failure of Poisson Modeling. (1995) • V. Paxson and S. Floyd. • Self-similarity through high-variability: statistical analysis of ethernet LAN traffic at the source level (1995) • W. Willinger, M. S. Taqqu, R. Sherman, and D. V. Wilson. • Self-Similarity in World Wide Web Traffic: Evidence and Possible Causes. (1997) • M. E. Crovella and A. Bestavros. • New tools and models • Wavelet Analysis of Long-Range Dependence (1998) • P. Abry and D. Veitch.
Traces • Traces taken by CAIDA monitors at a Tier 1 Internet Service Provider (ISP) • OC48 link (2.4Gbps) • State of the art Dag4 monitors • August 2002, January 2003, April 2003 • Traces from the WIDE backbone • Trans-Pacific 100Mbps link (June 2003)
Packet arrivals appear Poisson! • Backbone: Interarrival times follow the exponential distribution • CCDF is a straight line with 99.99% correlation coefficient • Arrivals appear uncorrelated • We examine correlations with several tools CCDF of packet interarrival times (100Mbps) CCDF of packet interarrival times (OC48) log(P[X>x]) log(P[X>x]) interarrival times (microsec) interarrival times (microsec)
LAN 1989 vs. Backbone 2003 • LAN - August 1989 • Bellcore traces • The trace that started the LRD revolution • Backbone - January 2003 • Current backbone traces Packet interarrival distribution
At the same time, traffic exhibits LRD properties • Statistical tools show LRD at large scales • Dichotomy in scaling behavior • Hurst exponent 0.7-0.85 at larger scales Abry-Veitch Wavelet estimator
Backbone traffic appears smooth but nonstationary at multi-second time-scales • Rate changes at second scales • Canny Edge Detector algorithm from image processing to detect changes
Could nonstationarity appear as LRD? • LRD properties diminish when global average is replaced by moving average in ACF
How can we reconcile the observed behavior? • Observed behavior • Poisson packet arrivals • Nonstationary rate variation • Long-range dependence • Our conjecture: A time-dependent Poisson characterization of traffic • when viewed across very long time scales, exhibits the observed long-range dependence • It has been supported by theoretical work • (e.g., Andersen et al. JSAC ’98)
Caveats – Why we don’t have a definitive answer • Data collection • Duration, representative sample • Backbone versus access link • Estimation not calculation • Tools offer approximations and not definite conclusions • Approaching the truth • Different theories may explain different facets of the behavior at different scales