On the Use of Passive Network Measurements for Modeling the Internet

Abstract

Many important discoveries in Internet research have been made on the basis of traces collected by passive measurement systems. However, the various difficulties involved in capturing a network traffic trace have resulted in a poor availability of high-quality traces. Furthermore, with the rapidly increasing data rates of today’s Internet links, capturing a trace long enough to yield meaningful analysis results becomes more and more difficult. This paper emphasises the usefulness of passive measurements and outlines the methodology used to conduct them. We present three trace data sets to describe our analyses, among them a new trace captured at the University of Leipzig. We also show how packet traces can be used to support and evaluate Internet simulations.