HTTP/TCP connection and flow characteristics

Currently, most traffic in the Internet backbone and access networks is World Wide Web (WWW) traffic. On the basis of recent long-time traffic traces we present characteristics of WWW traffic for different flow levels, namely port-to-port, host-to-host, and total client access. Using flow duration distributions, we obtain estimates for the point in time when a shortcut connection should be established. Investigations of the correlation structure of different flow characteristics reveal that symmetrical connections occur even at high bit rates. A large number of TCP connections can therefore benefit from symmetric access network bandwidths although HTTP traffic on an average is asymmetric.