The probability distribution of any random variable whose logarithm is normally distributed. A variable can be modeled as log-normal if it can be thought of as the multiplicative product of many small independent factors. The body of the distribution of object or document sizes in WWW traffic is log-normal.
Published in Chapter:
Performance Analysis and Models of Web Traffic
Federico Montesino Pouzols (University of Seville, Spain), Angel Barriga Barros (University of Seville, Spain), Diego R. Lopez (RedIRIS, Spain), and Santiago Sánchez-Solano (CSIC - Scientific Research Council, Spain)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-885-7.ch157
Abstract
The Internet and, more specifically, Web-based applications now provide the first-ever global, easy-to-use, ubiquitous and economical communications channel. Most companies have already automated their operations to some extent, which enhances their ability to interact with other companies electronically. With the advent of Web services, the interaction between companies becomes easier and more transparent (Khalaf, Curbera, Nagy, Tai, Mukhi, & Duftler, 2005). Web-based technologies are extensively employed and support core components of virtual and networked organizations. Many of them, including for instance Web-based communities, heavily rely on Web traffic. Additionally, Web technologies play a central role in the technologies for supporting industrial virtual enterprises (VE) being developed by the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols Consortium (NIIIP). Thus, modelling and analysis techniques for Web traffic become important tools for performance analysis of virtual organizations (Malhotra, 2000; Foster, Kesselman, & Tuecke, 2001). This article overviews current models of Web traffic as well as performance analysis of Web-based systems.