Capacity Planning with the Statistical Prediction of on-off Flows

A novel approach to describe the relation, in terms of probability, between the gain obtained by multiplexing the traffics in the packet network and the link capacity for guaranteeing the required quality is proposed. A traffic-flow is defined as the on-off stream described with the probability distribution of the on-off lengths. With the statistical on-off flow description, the loads on a link after aggregating traffic flows can be predicted in terms of probability, and the link capacity design based on the probability of supporting the required quality becomes possible. To have statistical model of a flow with small number of data, an interpolation method is suggested. To find a congestion point with given link capacity and traffic flows, a calculation method to estimate the expected link reservation with traffic flows and the congestion probability is proposed