Traffic Measurement and Analysis of a Campus Network

Network traffic measurements and analysis, as one of the important methods of understanding network, can provide significant support for network research and operation. While Internet traffic has been well studied for several years, there are new characteristics of traffic having not been understood well brought by new applications. It is difficult to get these traffic metrics due to the difficulty to identify new applications using dynamic ports. In this paper, we present a multi-dimension analysis of network traffic of campus network, including temporal distribution, packet length distribution, protocol-based distribution, port-based distribution, and application-based distribution. We find the characteristics of traffic have changed greatly from previous measurements. Also, we explain the reasons bringing out these changes. Such analysis not only provides support for the study of user behavior, but also provides support for improving performance of traffic engineering.