A spatial and temporal analysis of Internet aggregate traffic at the flow level

In this paper we present an Internet aggregate traffic analysis at the flow level, in both spatial and temporal dimensions. The data traces were collected from CTBC Telecom (a Brazilian telecommunication company) IP backbone routers in three notable periods: the hour of the highest, medium and lowest traffic intensity. The spatial analysis focuses on the participation of the different transport protocols and on the main applications in the overall traffic. The temporal analysis is focused on TCP and UDP traffic and deals with the main Internet traffic issues, such as the arrival process, the first and second moments of the traffic, and the self-similarity. To do so, we considered the dynamics of the Internet traffic using a methodology that applies the Poisson shot-noise process. This analysis suggests that, when an NSP is planning to deploy QoS or traffic engineering on its Internet backbone, it must pay attention to the differences between the traffic profiles at flow and octet levels.