Traffic generation model

A traffic generation model is a stochastic model of the traffic flows or data sources in a communication network, for example a cellular network or a computer network. A packet generation model is a traffic generation model of the packet flows or data sources in a packet-switched network. For example, a web traffic model is a model of the data that is sent or received by a user's web-browser. These models are useful during the development of telecommunication technologies, in view to analyse the performance and capacity of various protocols, algorithms and network topologies . The network performance can be analyzed by network traffic measurement in a testbed network, using a network traffic generator such as iperf, bwping and Mausezahn. The traffic generator sends dummy packets, often with a unique packet identifier, making it possible to keep track of the packet delivery in the network. Numerical analysis using network simulation is often a less expensive approach. An analytical approach using queueing theory may be possible for a simplified traffic model but is often too complicated if a realistic traffic model is used. A simplified packet data model is the greedy source model. It may be useful in analyzing the maximum throughput for best-effort traffic (without any quality-of-service guarantees). Many traffic generators are greedy sources. Another simplified traditional traffic generation model for packet data, is the Poisson process, where the number of incoming packets and/or the packet lengths are modeled as an exponential distribution. When the packets interarrival time is exponential, with constant packet size it resembles an M/D/1 system. When both packet inter arrivals and sizes are exponential, it is an M/M/1 queue: However, the Poisson traffic model is memoryless, which means that it does not reflect the bursty nature of packet data, also known as the long-range dependency. For a more realistic model, a self-similar process such as the Pareto distribution can be used as a long-tail traffic model.