AN APPROXIMATION METHOD FOR CAPTURING COMPLEX TRAFFIC BEHAVIOR IN HIGH-SPEED NETWORKS

This paper provides a simple technique to approximately map complex user traffic behavior to a simple traffic model which can be fully characterized by three parameters. This approximate characterization relies on simple measurements taken at the access point to the network and enables various bandwidth management procedures being implemented for high speed networks (see Cidon et al., 1991; Guerin and Gun, 1992; Gun and Guerin, 1993) to be applicable for very general classes of user traffic. Through numerical examples, we show that this simple approach provides sufficiently accurate estimates of the potential impact of the true process on the network. Applications to characterizing multiplexed processes inside the network are also discussed.