The research objective is to develop traffic and performance models for the Internet. Internet applications exhibit growth trends, short and long term traffic variability and pose dif- ferent quality of service demands on the network. This traffic environment requires that networks migrate to dynamic routing and resource allocation paradigms for efficient sharing of network resources. Baseline traffic models and techniques to validate and adaptively update these models must be in place in the net- work to support dynamic network functions. This work proposes measurement driven time-series modeling approaches for capturing traffic characteristics and other seasonal and exogenous factors that influence traffic variability on the Internet. The models will be developed to capture both the short time-scales over which the arrival processes can be stationary as well the longer time-scale non-stationary features. Real-time traffic monitoring, measurement and modeling algorithms that can adaptively update and predict traffic descriptors will be designed for implementa- tion at network nodes. The preliminary research plan is aimed at determining feasible traffic measurement strategies for the longer term research work proposed above. Traffic measurements will be taken at a small set of access routers on the Internet. A baseline traffic sampling and characterization methodology will be outlined. Packet voice, variable bit rate video and traditional Internet traffic will be considered at the flow level. The effect of increasing granularity in traffic measurements and relative increase in information content useful for resource allocation will be examined. This preliminary work will determine the relevant time scales for traffic monitoring and measurements and a better understanding of the types of modeling tools that must be in place at Internet nodes to successfully implement adaptively controlled service a nd routing disciplines. The results of this research plan will be integral for the PI's long term research interests in designing an adaptive dual mode connection and flow level traffic charac- terization scheme to be used in admission control, end-to-end resource reservation and adaptive routing decisions in broadband packet networks. Refer to http://morse.uml.edu/~kchandra/traffic_rsrch.html for ongoing research activities.
