Self-Similar Property for TCP Traffic under the Bottleneck Bandwidth Restrainment

Abstract

The scale-invariant burstiness or self-similarity has been found in real network. Relation between self-similarity and network and/or system parameter is mainly discussed in the context of application layer, and this self-similarity is caused by the file size of Web servers or the duration of user sessions. In addition, self-similar burstiness has been characterized by the transport layer protocol. Traffic dynamics, however, are mainly generated by physical conditions such as the resource restrainment. In this paper, we have investigated self-similar property for TCP traffic under the bandwidth restrainment to make the network parameter vary using the network simulator. After analyzing the simulated results, following properties were extracted. Firstly, the packet loss rate at the boundary of releasing the restriction of bottleneck bandwidth suddenly drops from 10% to 1%. Secondly, estimated Hurst parameter depicts unstable fluctuation at over 4% packet loss rate, with linear slope at under 4% packet loss rate.