Traffic profiles in communication networks refer to the mean rate and the variability of the traffic rate over time. Applications on the Internet generate their specific source traffic profiles, from which they may be classified as narrow- or broadband, constant bit rate or variable rate. Telephony and voice over IP differs in the traffic characteristic from video streaming and background data transfers, such that properties of source traffic profiles can be used to classify the corresponding application type. Traffic profiles are also measured for aggregated traffic on transmission links.
Published in Chapter:
Network Planning and Dimensioning for Broadband Access to the Internet Regarding Quality of Service Demands
Franz Hartleb (T-Systems, Germany), Gerhard Haßlinger (T-Systems, Germany), and Sebastian Kempken (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-194-0.ch054
Abstract
An ongoing challenge in telecommunication is the integration of a variety of services on broadband access platforms at increasing transmission speed. Traditional Internet services like file transfer, email and web browsing, are carried on the same multi service IP platforms with voice, video and television over IP, online gaming, peer-to-peer and grid networking etc. While broadband access is established as a standard equipment for homes, the networking capacities in the access and the backbone are steadily extended to keep pace with higher traffic volumes. Together with the spectrum of services, the traffic mix on the aggregation levels becomes increasingly versatile with different demands for end-to-end transport in terms of throughput, loss and delay sensitivity. The chapter focuses on planning and traffic engineering for link bandwidth and buffers as main resources in communication platforms based on measurement and statistical properties of traffic growth and variability. We summarize quality of service demands of main Internet applications and mechanisms to control and stabilize the performance of ISP network platforms on different time scales. Load thresholds for link dimensioning are derived with regard to quality of service (QoS) demands and the variability in source and aggregated profiles. Finally, link level and network wide traffic engineering is addressed together with load balancing techniques.