characterizing how traffic streams aggregate


dragonflies & tortoises
method of measuring the size and lifetime of Internet streams
independent dimensions: mice..elephants; dragonflies..tortoises
two example sites
most streams (about 45% ) are dragonflies, lasting less than 2 seconds, 98% less than 15 minutes
tortoise: stream > 15 min 
significant number have lifetimes of hours to days, and can carry a high proportion (50% to 60%) of the total bytes on a given link
distribution of stream sizes matters
any forwarding cache mechanisms in Internet routers must be able to cope with a high volume of short streams. 
long-running (LR) streams can contribute a significant fraction of their packet and byte volumes -- shedding doubt on using traditional 'flat rate user bandwidth consumption' approaches to provisioning and engineering. 

http://www.caida.org/publications/papers/2002/Dragonflies/
(nevil@caida.org)