From: Ioannis Giotis (giotis@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 05 2004 - 12:08:48 PST
The purpose of this paper is to understand better characteristics of
internet traffic by analyzing collected data. The authors setup a
measuring system to get some idea on the bandwidth consumed by different
services. Besides normal web traffic, they focus mainly on P2P networks
and content delivering mechanisms choosing Akamai as a representative.
The main result coming from this paper is the extent at which P2P
traffic has taken over the internet. It is clear from the data collected
that it should be the major traffic contributor in any medium to large
ISP. Some other interesting points are highlighted. For example, the
effect P2P has in the client-server model the web had established, since
in P2P traffic all nodes act both as clients and servers. UW's high
speed connections favor the appearance of nodes that act more as servers
than clients. Another interesting point is the difference in the size of
objects delivered by P2P versus the small objects that are used in web
traffic.
Content delivering providers such as Akamai, make up a small portion of
the traffic. Although, the basic idea is good in theory, it appears that
it has not been extensively adopted or the trend towards dynamically
created content prohibits the use of such mechanisms.
The main conclusion coming out of the paper is that P2P networks have
changed the nature of internet traffic and their inability to scale
caused by the high bandwidth requirements could lead to severe problems
that could also impact all other services. One should also note the rate
at which these networks have become wide spread, something that could
also question the validity of these measurements today. Nevertheless,
the common belief is that today's traffic looks similar to the figures
presented in the paper, which leaves us with the same questions and
concerns.
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