On the evolution of internet flow characteristics

Abstract

The ongoing evolution of technologies and network services on the Internet indicates ongoing changes in traffic and flow characteristics. Since the analysis of flow characteristics, like duration, size, and rate, has been a frequently studied topic before, results on the evolution of flow characteristics are rare. This paper surveys how flow characteristics have changed over time and whether there are significant trends in such characteristics. We present a long-term study of TCP flow characteristics based on traffic captures taken between 2008 and 2019. We apply different methods to analyze the distribution of characteristics, the relevance of heavy hitters, and correlations between characteristics. Our analysis shows significant trends in the 99th percentiles of flow characteristics, persistent dominance by heavy hitters regarding transmitted data, and increasing relevance of so-called big-fast flows.