Contributions to the traffic matrix problem
Dimitri Marakov · OpenGrey (Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique) · 2007
This thesis addresses the traffic matrix estimation problem. Knowledge about the origin-destination (OD) traffic matrix (TM) allows us to solve problems in network engineering; the OD traffic matrix gives us a valuable information about who is communicating with whom in a network, at any given time. Traffic analysis, based on detailed packet or flow level measurements, usually not available throughout a large network due to hardware limitations or/and security reasons. An alternative approach is to use mathematical and statistical techniques for the estimation using the incomplete data accessible via SMNP. In my PhD thesis I describe the traffic data collection and, perform a critical evaluation of existing and novel methods for TM estimation on the real and synthetic data, and test the statistical and non-statistical methods. I discuss the weaknesses and strengths of the various methods, and highlight differences in the results for the simulated traffic and the real one obtained from European and American subnetworks. This research also addresses the variability of Internet traffic in backbone networks is essential for the creation of the better traffic model (vital for the estimation techniques), to better plan and manage existing networks, as well as to design next generation networks. I show the difference between the real traffic in high-bandwidth networks with the classic and most commonly used traffic models, propose a high-bandwidth TM simulation technique which can help with the evaluation of the traffic matrix algorithms in the case when the real TM necessary for the algorithms verification is difficult to obtain..