Traffic Measurements on Hippi Links in a Supercomputing Environment

Abstract

In the future high speed networks, e.g., Broadband ISDN and Gigabit networks, we can expect three major types of traffic; namely, the variable bit rate data traffic, the variable bit rate video traffic, and the constant bit rate service traffic. The three types have different traffic characteristics and quality of service requirements. The variable bit rate data traffic is extremely bursty, and the connection between the source and the destination operates at its peak bandwidth, or is quiescent. The variable bit rate video traffic is not as bursty as the variable bit rate data traffic, but is more delay-sensitive, as the temporal relationship of the information is significant. The constant bit rate service traffic has a constant cell stream, and is sensitive to delay and delay variation, as the data need to be delivered timely. Its sensitivity to cell loss will depend on the application of the service.