Burst Ratio of Packet Losses in Individual Network Flows

Abstract

We study the burst ratio of packet loss processes in networking. This parameter characterizes the inclination of packet losses to form long, consecutive sequences. Such long sequences of losses may have a negative impact on multimedia streams, particularly those of real-time type. In packet networks, the burst ratio is often elevated due to overflows of packet buffers, which are present in all routers and switches. In the article, we investigate the burst ratio in the per-flow manner, i.e. individually for every flow of packets traversing a network node. We first confront all the per-flow burst ratios with each other, as well as with the burst ratio computed for the multiplexed traffic. Next, we study the influence of different features of the system on these burst ratios. In particular, the influence of rates of flows and their proportions, the standard deviation of interarrival times, the capacity of the buffer, the system load and the distribution of the service time, is studied. Special attention is paid to models with non-Poisson flows, which are not analytically tractable.