A Historical View of Network Traffic Models

Network traffic models have evolved significantly over the lifetime of the Internet. The earliest models were largely Poisson-based, designed for ease of analysis. The discovery of traffic self-similarity and long-range dependence required significant changes to traffic models. We examine this evolution from the early models, through the discovery of self-similarity, to the modern systems that account for complexities such as the impact of TCP congestion control, and practical modeling of arbitrary network traffic.