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Abstract

We investigate in this paper the time evolution and the composition in terms of applications of traffic in two different networks, namely the Renater network, dedicated to the French academic and research community, and the France Télécom backbone network supporting commercial traffic. For each network, we present the time evolution of traffic in terms of applications, the associated pie charts for global results, as well as, for each detected application, its flow size distribution, that should have an impact on the traffic nature (self-similarity or long range dependence due to the heavy tail of flow size distribution). Based on these results, this paper presents a discussion on the differences between academic and commercial traffic in terms of usage, as well as possible solutions against LRD and its associated degradation of network performance. For traffic analysis, we propose a new method of classifying traffic according to applications, which relies on applicative protocols recognition instead on the IANA ports numbers.

Mots-Clés / Keywords

Telecommunication network; Teletraffic; Traffic metering; Internet; Scientific and technical research; France Telecom; Application; Classification;

Résumé

La croissance et les évolutions de lInternet lors de ces deux dernières décennies ont considérablement augmenté la complexité des techniques mises en Suvre dans ce réseau, ainsi que les caractéristiques de son trafic. Ainsi, alors quon demande à lInternet de fournir des services de communication de qualités garanties, la méconnaissance des caractéristiques de lInternet et de son trafic ont conduit à léchec de toutes les propositions faites en ce sens. Mon travail de ces 6 dernières années a donc proposé dutiliser la métrologie Internet pour régler ce problème et montre comment cette nouvelle (dans lInternet) « science des mesures » fournit des éléments essentiels à lévolution technique des réseaux. Ce travail aborde donc essentiellement la caractérisation et lanalyse du réseau et de son trafic, dont les résultats ont été utilisés pour la conception dune nouvelle architecture de lInternet basée sur un système de métrologie global qui permet de sensiblement améliorer les performances et la qualité des services de lInternet. A noter que les résultats de caractérisation du trafic permettent de classifier les anomalies du trafic en anomalies légitimes (foules subites) et illégitimes (attaques) et ouvrent donc la voie à une nouvelle façon de penser la sécurité des réseaux de communication.

Abstract

The increase and the evolution of the Internet during the two last decades have significantly increased the complexity of communication techniques in this network, as well as its traffic characteristics. Thus, while the Internet is requested to provide services with guaranteed qualities, the bad knowledge of its characteristics and its traffic lead to the failure of all proposals made for this purpose. My work during the 6 last years proposed to use Internet monitoring for solving this issue, and shows how this new (new in the Internet) science of measurements provides essential information for the technical evolution of networks. This work then essentially deals with the characterization and analysis of the Internet networks and traffic, whose results lead to the design of a new Internet architecture based on a global monitoring system which allows a significant increase of the Internet performance and quality of service. Note also that the results on traffic characterization allow the classification of traffic anomalies into legitimate (as flash crowds) and illegitimate (attacks), and open new ways for the security of communication networks

Mots-Clés / Keywords

Internet; Métrologie; Qualité de service; Expérimentation réseau; Sécurité; Monitoring; Quality of service; Network experiments; Security;