How Real Can Synthetic Network Traffic Be
Félix Hernández-Campos, F. Donelson, Smith Kevin Jeffay · 2001
At some point, most networking researchers simulate or emulate networks in order to understand the behavior or performance of some piece of networking technology. In performing these experiments, there is a clear need to have the ability to generate realistic synthetic workloads; synthetic network traffic whose statistical properties match those of traffic observed on a real network link. In our work, we are developing a method of traffic modeling and synthetic generation that can realize a new level of realism in network experiments that is not possible with existing techniques. Our approach follows the philosophy of using source-level descriptions of network traffic advocated by Floyd and Paxson [1]. We develop a new source-level model of the data exchange dynamics inside a TCP connection that is application-independent, and therefore amenable to modeling the complete mix of TCP