Does different broadband "last mile" see Similar Traffic Behavior? : A Comparative Study

Does different broadband "last mile" see Similar Traffic Behavior? : A Comparative Study

Abstract:

In recent years, broadband access has become the norm in the Internet world. So far, the practice has been to use the traffic behavior on one broadband access network to plan and design another access network with different access technology; the underlying assumption being that the traffic behavior is similar. Here, we present an analysis of TCP/IP traffic that has been collected from two different broadband access networks: Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and Broadband Fixed Wireless (BFW). We compare the TCP connection arrival process at the access to understand the aggregate session arrival behavior as seen by the two networks with different broadband technologies. We also compare the TCP session behavior in terms of duration and number of bytes transferred by dominating applications in both the access schemes. We observe that the behavior of the TCP connection arrival process differs due to the influence of the underlying MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol in BFW access, although, the TCP session behavior is similar in both access networks.