Bursty Traffic Local Network Modeling

A computer program to predict the performance of local area networks based on an Ethernet or other medium is described. The effects of bursty traffic are modeled as packet streams which are initially bulk Poisson, but whose clusters spread apart as they propagate through the network. It is shown by example that performance predictions using more conventional Poisson assumptions tend to be optimistic, often extremely so. The program presents a friendly, dialogue-oriented user interface, including a library of rather sophisticated transaction types for network loading. A simulator is included in the program to validate its analytical approximations, and two example simulations are presented. Although approximation errors can be large in highly bursty situations, these errors appear to be much less than those which would be obtained by treating bursty traffic as if it were Poisson.