The number of packets transferred per second across a computer network.
Published in Chapter:
Evaluating Computer Network Packet Inter-Arrival Distributions
Dennis Guster (St. Cloud State University, USA), David Robinson (St. Cloud State University, USA), and Richard Sundheim (St. Cloud State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 6
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch232
Abstract
The past decade could be classified as the “decade of connectivity”; in fact, it is commonplace for computers to be connected to an LAN, which in turn is connected to a WAN, which provides an Internet connection. On an application level this connectivity allows access to data that even five years earlier were unavailable to the general population. This growth has not occurred without problems, however. The number of users and the complexity/size of their applications continue to mushroom. Many networks are over-subscribed in terms of bandwidth, especially during peak usage periods. Often network growth was not planned for, and these networks suffer from poor design. Also, the explosive growth has often necessitated that crisis management be employed just to keep basic applications running. Whatever the source of the problem, it is clear that proactive design and management strategies need to be employed to optimize available networking resources (Fortier & Desrochers, 1990). This is especially true in today’s world of massive Internet usage (Zhu, Yu, & Doyle, 2001).