Abstract

Recently, statistical analysis of high-resolution measurements of several types of network traffic has shown that many type of network traffic are self-similar or fractal in nature. This report gives an overview of self-similarity and examines the effect of self-similar inputs on the performance of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches. This is done through the use of trace based simulation using actual Ethernet traffic traces. The results of these simulations suggest that self-similarity has an adverse effect on the performance of ATM switches and that certain suggested bandwidth allocation policies for ATM switches will significantly outperform others in the presence of self-similarity. ii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge several people who have helped with this project: Mike Devetsikiotis for providing me with numerous papers addressing the topic of selfsimilarity and for introducing me to several members of the Bellcore research team, Rob Tyson for providing me wi...

Citations