Measurements and Models of Wide Area TCP Conversations [Thesis]
Vern Paxson · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1991
This paper describes measurements of all the wide area network TCP conversations between the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) and the rest of the world for the months of November, 1990, and March, 1991. Some 500,000 conversations were recorded, encompassing 11 different major protocols. We look at aggregate characteristics of these conversations, both overall and by TCP protocol (e.g., smtp, ftp), computing the distributions of amount of data transferred, network bandwidth used, conversion lifetimes and conversation interarrival times. Temporal traffic variation is also investigated, showing the variation of number of active conversations and network bandwidth utilization over periods of 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. Long term variation is also investigated by separately analyzing November and March data (which reveals a 10–20% increase in almost all aggregate traffic characteristics in just four months). We classify each conversation geographically and discover that the connectivity of the conversations were remarkably rich, including traffic to 48 of the 50 states in the US and 23 foreign countries. Finally, we develop a number of models for describing conversations of the various protocols. From these models we can more readily assess how each protocol is used and how the use changes as network utilization grows.