Single source TCP behaviour: a multifractal analysis

As far as we know, three non-mutually exclusive reasons have been given to account for the complex scaling behaviour observed in IP traffic on small time scales, namely: data fragmentation due to protocol layering; complex interactions in the network between traffic flows and data and storage elements; the TCP mechanism. Focusing on the TCP mechanism, we simulated the most important features of a single TCP source and applied a multifractal scaling analysis to the packet traces injected into the network. No competing sources affected the time spacing between packets and therefore the TCP source could feed the network according to its own mechanism. On the basis of our simulation results we were able to conclude that the TCP mechanism alone produces two different behaviours in the outgoing traffic, depending on the time scales: at small time scales it displays a multifractal behaviour, even if it was not present in the original series of packet delays. At larger time scales, the outgoing traffic shows a self-similar behaviour with only one Holder exponent