Establishing broadband application signatures through ATM network traffic measurement analyses

The fundamental challenge in the traffic management of high-speed networks is to describe, analyse and control complex traffic flows in ways that can be applied in practice. Our approach to this problem is experimental in nature and starts with collection and analysis of high-resolution traffic traces from working high-speed networks. This paper analyzes cell-level ATM traffic and performance modeling issues of individual connections (i.e., VPI/VCIs) based on recent traffic measurements collected from a major North American public ATM network through a custom-built ATM traffic recording prototype device. In particular, we focus on the following issues related to modeling individual ATM connections at the cell level: the existence of ON-OFF behavior, sojourn time distributions of the ON and OFF periods, traffic arrival patterns within an ON period, temporal and spatial correlations, and performance impacts. Characteristics of individual connections can be highly dependent on the applications which generate the traffic and caution should be taken in interpreting these exact results for use in other ATM networks