On the propagation of long-range dependence in the Internet

Abstract

This paper analyzes how TCP congestion control can propagate self-similarity between distant areas of the Internet. This property of TCP is due to its congestion control algorithm, which adapts to self-similar fluctuations on several timescales. The mechanisms and limitations of this propagation are investigated, and it is demonstrated that if a TCP connection shares a bottleneck link with a self-similar background traffic flow, it propagates the correlation structure of the background traffic flow above a characteristic timescale. The cut-off timescale depends on the end-to-end path properties, e.g., round-trip time and average window size. It is also demonstrated that even short TCP connections can propagate long-range correlations effectively. Our analysis reveals that if congestion periods in a connection's hops are long-range dependent, then the end-user perceived end-to-end traffic is also long-range dependent and it is characterized by the largest Hurst exponent. Furthermore, it is shown that self-similarity of one TCP stream can be passed on to other TCP streams that it is multiplexed with. These mechanisms complement the widespread scaling phenomena reported in a number of recent papers. Our arguments are supported with a combination of analytic techniques, simulations and statistical analyses of real Internet traffic measurements.