Traffic models for future backbone networks - a service-oriented approach

In this paper we present a novel approach to assess the impact of new and existing services on traffic volume in current and future backbone networks. Several proposals to model traffic load in access and backbone networks exist in the literature. These proposals consider current Internet traffic like http, smtp, ftp and Peer-to-Peer (P2P). We expect, however, that there will be a change in traffic load for future networks caused by services like IP Television (IPTV), Video on Demand (VoD) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Additionally, population-based models may no longer be applicable due to the widespread use of service-providers and hierarchical routing through network peering points. Therefore, it is important to reassess future traffic volumes and traffic patterns and to identify those services that have the most impact on the networks. We model today's traffic volume of each of the described services and estimate future traffic volumes taking peering points into account. To illustrate the different traffic flows and to characterise the traffic distribution we apply our results to a Germany reference network. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.