High level traffic analysis of a LAN segment

Author

Barnett, Bruce G. ; Saulnier, Emilie T.

Author_Institution

General Electric Res. & Dev., Schenectady, NY, USA

fYear

1992

fDate

13-16 Sep 1992

Firstpage

188

Lastpage

197

Abstract

A data collection and analysis study of packet traffic over a local area network is reported. The objectives of this study are to develop analysis tools to isolate the effect of each protocol, and eventually each application. The measurements of the LAN are made using a raw Ethernet packet capture program (tcpdump) running on a Sun workstation. The analysis was accomplished using a PERL script and the ACE/gr data analysis program. The contribution of each protocol and host is isolated, and the higher-level application mix is examined. The characteristics of the protocol traffic are examined, and it is shown that the lower-rate traffic protocol characteristics, while not Poisson, are similar to a proposed two-state Markov chain model, while the higher-rate protocol/application traffic exhibits correlation and periodicity that are more difficult to model analytically

Keywords

Markov processes; local area networks; packet switching; performance evaluation; protocols; telecommunication traffic; ACE/gr data analysis program; Ethernet packet capture program; LAN segment; PERL script; Sun workstation; data collection; host; local area network; packet traffic; protocol traffic; tcpdump; traffic analysis; two-state Markov chain model; Bridges; Data analysis; File servers; Local area networks; Protocols; Research and development; Sun; Telecommunication traffic; Traffic control; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Local Computer Networks, 1992. Proceedings., 17th Conference on

Conference_Location

Minneapolis, MN

Print_ISBN

0-8186-3095-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LCN.1992.228159

Filename

228159