Performance analysis of the Ethernet under conditions of bursty traffic

A simulation study of Ethernet performance under conditions of bursty traffic is presented. Previous performance studies of the Ethernet are summarized. The Ethernet simulation model is presented. The traffic sources which generates both Poisson and bursty traffic is described. Results show that the inherent behavior of the Ethernet does not change with bursty traffic, as long as the utilization is less than a threshold value, packet delay is almost the same as the transmission time, queue lengths are minimal, and packet loss due to collisions is zero. However, as the utilization increases beyond the threshold, packet delay, queue lengths, and packet loss rate increase very quickly. The Ethernet performance is found to deteriorate faster with the burstiness of traffic sources, and bursty sources are more demanding than Poisson sources. For example, packet loss due to collisions, packet delay, and queue length increase with the burstiness of traffic sources. At high utilization, packet loss and queue lengths are less for bursty sources with higher peak-to-average bandwidth ratio