Long-term traffic aspects of the NSFNET
kc claffy, George C. Polyzos, Hans-Werner Braun · 1993
We present the architecture for data collection for the T3 NSFNET backbone service, and difficulties with using the collected statistics for long-term network forecasting of certain traffic aspects. We describerelevant aspectsoftheT3backbone architecture, describe the instrumentation for the statistics collection process, and how it differs from that on the T1 backbone. We then present longterm NSFNET data to elucidate long term trends in both the reachability of Internet components via the NSFNET as well as the growing cross-section of traffic. We focus on the difficulties of forecasting and planning for these two traffic aspectsinan infrastructure whose protocol architecture and instrumentation for data collection was not designed to support such objectives.