Global and local scaling analysis of link streams in access and backbone core networks

Abstract

Due to continuous innovations in links and their flows traditional Internet traffic analysis with novel applications will always remain an active area of research. These innovations in links are due to dynamic user access patterns, end point software applications, carrier media, flow interactions, muliplexing, demultiplexing and data center access, for example. This article presents a new framework for analysis of Internet traffic based on formalism of Link Streams which is better than traditional graph theory in terms of uncovering temporal but converged dependence structures in various traffic components and their aggregates. This article is the first study which presents a joint global and local scaling analysis of direction tagged traffic originating and terminating at three different Internet access links belonging to DSL, Ethernet and Wifi hotspot networks and their backbone core network. The notion of link streams has encouraged us to assess Internet traffic both in terms of dynamics of link components along with their sub components like packets, flows and sessions with their aggregates. Link stream based analysis framework has led us to develop simple and realistic Internet traffic models based on Weibull and superposed Pareto renewal processes which capture both global and local scaling properties of Internet traffic in terms of their interactions in access and backbone core networks.