An HMM Approach to Internet Traffic Modeling

Traffic modeling is a fertile research area. This paper proposes a packet-level traffic model of traffic sources based on Hidden Markov Model. It has been developed by using real network traffic and estimating in a combined fashion Packet Size and Inter Packet Time. The effectiveness of the proposed model is evaluated by studying several traffic types with strong differences in terms of both applications/users and protocol behavior. Indeed, we applied our model to real traffic traces of Age of Mythology (a Multi Player Network Game), SMTP, and HTTP. An analytical basis and the mathematical details regarding the model are given. Results show how the proposed model captures first-order statistics, as well as temporal dynamics via auto- and cross-correlation. Also, the capability to accurately replicate the considered traffic sources is shown. Finally, preliminary results for model-based traffic prediction reveal encouraging.