Empirically derived analytic models of wide-area TCP connections

Analyzes 3 million TCP connections that occurred during 15 wide-area traffic traces. The traces were gathered at five “stub” networks and two internetwork gateways, providing a diverse look at wide-area traffic. The author derives analytic models describing the random variables associated with TELNET, NNTP, SMTP, and FTP connections. To assess these models the author presents a quantitative methodology for comparing their effectiveness with that of empirical models such as Tcplib [Danzig and Jamin, 1991]. The methodology also allows to determine which random variables show significant variation from site to site, over time, or between stub networks and internetwork gateways. Overall the author finds that the analytic models provide good descriptions, and generally model the various distributions as well as empirical models