A methodology for analyzing backbone network traffic at stream-level

Most of the network traffic analysis studies begin at the fine-grained level, such as packet-level and flow-level. Based on accurate measurements and complex analysis methods, these studies could not be carried out widely throughout a backbone network. In this paper, we introduce a methodology for analyzing network traffic at the coarse-grained level by incorporating stream information, which could be achieved by simple passive monitoring. A careful study if many traffic traces acquired on an international link between two ISPs validates our work.