Measurements of Wide Area Internet Traffic

                       Ramon Caceres

                 Computer Science Division
                  University of California
                    Berkeley  CA  94720
                     ramon@berkeley.edu

Measurement and analysis of current  behavior  are  valuable
techniques  for the study of computer networks.  In addition
to providing insight into the operation and  usage  patterns
of present networks, the results can be used to create real-
istic models of existing traffic sources.  Such models are a
key  component  of the analytic and simulation studies often
undertaken in the design of  future  networks.   This  paper
presents measurements of wide area Internet traffic gathered
at the junction between a large industrial research  labora-
tory  and  the  rest  of the Internet.  Using bar graphs and
histograms, it shows  the  statistics  obtained  for  packet
counts,  byte  counts, and packet length frequencies, broken
down by major transport protocols and network services.  For
the  purpose  of  modeling wide area traffic, the histograms
are of particular interest because they concisely character-
ize the distribution of packet lengths produced by different
wide area network services such  as  file  transfer,  remote
login, and electronic mail.