Analyzing Telephone Network Data

Abstract

As our reliance on computer networks grows, it becomes increasingly important that we understand the behavior of the traffic that they carry. Because of the speeds and sizes involved, working with traffic collected from a computer network usually means working with large datasets. This article describes our experience with traffic collected from the common channel signaling (CCS) network. I will briefly describe the data and how they are collected and discuss similarities with and differences from other large datasets. Next, I will describe our analysis tools and outline the reasons that they have been found useful. Finally, I will discuss the challenges facing us as we strive for a better understanding of more data from faster networks. Although my emphasis in this article is on the CCS network, it has been my experience that both the problems and the solutions generalize to data from other networks.