A sum of bernoulli sources approximation for packet switched network traffic in backbone links

Abstract

In this letter an intuitive measurement based approximation for packet switched network traffic in backbone links is presented. It consists of a sum of independent non-identical Bernoulli sources. The resulting sum has a Poisson binomial distribution which can be approximated to a skewed Gaussian distribution at the asymptote. It can be further approximated to a binomial distribution for predicting congestion by estimating the number of users of the network. The results are verified using samples of traffic data from 42 academic and research institutions.