High level traffic analysis of a LAN segment

A data collection and analysis study of packet traffic over a local area network is reported. The objectives of this study are to develop analysis tools to isolate the effect of each protocol, and eventually each application. The measurements of the LAN are made using a raw Ethernet packet capture program (tcpdump) running on a Sun workstation. The analysis was accomplished using a PERL script and the ACE/gr data analysis program. The contribution of each protocol and host is isolated, and the higher-level application mix is examined. The characteristics of the protocol traffic are examined, and it is shown that the lower-rate traffic protocol characteristics, while not Poisson, are similar to a proposed two-state Markov chain model, while the higher-rate protocol/application traffic exhibits correlation and periodicity that are more difficult to model analytically.<>