Analyzing Internet Packet Traces using Lindley´s Recursion

Internet trace packet data for a given network link contains information on each packet´s arrival time and size. An important problem is to model the congestion packets experienced over the collection period. Recent research has utilized a relationship from queueing theory known as Lindley´s recursion to model packet congestion. This relationship has existed for 50 years and has been quite beneficial in analyzing these traces. We report on our use of Lindley´s recursion to analyze publicly-available link data from the Abilene network, an Internet2 backbone network. We extend the use of Lindley´s Recursion and include a discussion of the computational problems, numerical evaluation of trace packet performance and potential modeling issues, and a statistical investigation of the independence of packet interarrival times. In addition, we show how Lindley´s recursion can be used to extend the baseline analysis to interject Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) packets into the trace