[e2e] Traffic Burstiness Survey

[Craig Partridge]

Hi Monia:

I'll make a quick answer in the hopes that someone on the list will provide
a better one.

> 1) =91Bursty=92 is a word with no agreed meaning. How do you define a burst=
> y
> traffic?

I don't know of a widely agreed upon definition.  Generally when people say
"bursty" traffic they mean non-isochronous traffic -- namely traffic where
transmissions are not evenly spaced.

Personally I try to push that definition a little further and say that
"burst Poisson" isn't truly bursty either.  That's because we've known
since the early 1980s (and finally understood why when we saw the
self-similarity paper of 1993) that "burst Poisson" doesn't capture the
complexity of bursty traffic we see in networks.

> 2) If you are involved with a data center, is your data center traffic
> bursty?
>     -- If yes,
>         -- Do you think that it will be useful to supress the burstiness in
> your traffic? (For example by pacing the traffic into shorter bursts)
>     -- If no:
>         -- Are you already supressing the burstiness? How?
>          -- Would you anticipate the traffic becoming burstier in the
> future?

I don't do data center traffic analysis (indeed, getting good data is hard),
but they certainly see (non-Poisson) bursty traffic.

Good luck with your research!

Craig