Bridging the Gap between Mathematical Traffic Models and Operational Parameters

Over the past decade and more, several accurate but complex traffic models have been developed by just as many researchers. Among the most accurate models are those based on mathematical principles that are able to model the multifractal nature of network traffic. Unfortunately these models are hardly even usable by network engineers because they lack a connection to operational parameters that can easily be estimated based on the knowledge of the network. In this paper, we try to bridge the gap between high-level parameters describing the concerning network and the inputs the modern traffic models need to generate artificial traffic. We first build a model of the behavior of TCP over the duration of a flow, and we then approximate this behavior based on simple parameters such as for example the packet transmission time and the RTT.