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RE: some questions

  • From: sthaug@nethelp.no
  • Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 17:30:04 +0200
  • Cc: puddinghead_wilson007@yahoo.co.uk, mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
  • Resent-Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 11:59:34 -0400
  • To: john.bell@thus.net

> The aggregated traffic *is* quite like white noise - in the sense that
> packet arrival times are random. The important point here is not that there
> are no peaks to the traffic, but that, as the number of aggregated streams
> increases, the ratio of the size of the peaks compared to the total amount
> of traffic gets smaller, so the flow is "smoother". Basically, you get a big
> fat flow of data, with a few small spikes on top of it. Fractal traffic
> profiles do NOT behave like this. The peak size stays the same relative to
> the flow of data. Add lots of fractal traffic streams together and you get
> one large flow of traffic, with very big peaks and troughs.

It might be a good idea to read some of the influential papers in this
field, for instance Leland & al: "On the Self-Similar Nature of Ethernet
Traffic":

	http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/leland93selfsimilar.html

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no


>  
> Cheers, 
>     John
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Puddinhead Wilson [mailto:puddinghead_wilson007@yahoo.co.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 02:18
> To: mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
> Subject: RE: [MPLS-OPS]: some questions
> 
> 
> Hello John,
>  
> Please see inline...
> 
> "Bell, John" <john.bell@thus.net> wrote:
> 
> Assume customer A takes a 100Mbps link from a Service Provider. If that
> customer then sent 100Mbps of data all day, every day on that link, then SPs
> would indeed provision the core as you said. Three such customers would get
> 300Mpbs in the core.
>  
> However, customers do NOT do this. Customer traffic is bursty. Customer A
> will send lots of data on his link during office hours, and much less data
> at three o'clock in the morning. On a typical 100Mbps link, such a customer
> may only send, on average, 30Mbps of traffic. SPs *could* give three
> customers like our customer A 300Mbps over their core, but since, on
> average, they only send 30Mbps each, it's possible to just give them 100Mbps
> in the core.
>  
> What's the benefit for the SP? Well, he gets to sell his core THREE times,
> rather than once. The bean-counters love this!
>  
> >> well yes, I agree.
>  
> What's the problem with doing this? Well, if all three customers try to send
> data at their maximum rate at the same time, they will experience
> congestion, and their data will not get through.
>  
> >> agree here too :)
>  
> Traditionally, this was not much of a problem, so long as customer traffic
> packet arrival times followed a Poisson distribution. Why? Because Poisson
> distributions have the great property that, when you add them together, they
> smooth out the burstiness of customer traffic, and produce a smooth
> aggregate traffic flow pattern.
>  
> >> that is something I do not understand, I assumed it would be closer
> stastically to something like "white noise".
> How did we end up with Poisson (which in a way would extrapolate to Gaussian
> ).
>  
>  
>  Much effort was put into developing statistical models that allowed
> engineers to calculate just how much bursty traffic they could aggregate,
> before they caused congestion.
>  
> Everybody was now happy - the customer traffic got through, and the SP could
> make lots of money oversubscribing their core.
>  
> Internet traffic does not follow a Poisson distribution, however. Traffic
> analysis in the early ninties identified that Internet traffic followed a
> fractal distribution. This means that aggregated traffic flows DO NOT smooth
> out bursty peaks! The bursts, in fact, get worse! So SPs have to either give
> up on oversubscribing their core (not a problem for us engineers, but a
> MAJOR problem for the bean counters and shareholders who see their profits
> fall) or institute QOS and Traffic Engineering schemes that ensure that when
> the congestion happens, the high paying traffic is not affected. The guys
> who DONT pay a premium for QoS get their traffic dropped.
>  
> >> that is economics
>  
> This situation is complicated, right now, by the Internet boom years - where
> gazillions of optical fibres were put in the ground. This led to huge
> amounts of bandwidth being available in the core, and not much traffic on
> it! Companies desperate for revenue undercut each other on charging for this
> bandwidth, until the cost was mege-cheap.  So lots of new companies didnt
> bother with oversubscribing traffic, or implementing QoS or TE because they
> had so much bandwidth and so little traffic.
>  
> This is not a sustainable situation, however. Sooner or later, these pipes
> will fill. We will then be faced with the choice of either
> (i) paying oodles of money to lay new fibres, or
> (ii) using QoS/TE/oversubscription to squeeze more cash out of our existing
> fibres.
>  
> As an engineer, my life would be much easier if option (i) was taken.
> However, engineers DONT get to decide. Bean-counters decide!. 
> Which do YOU think they'll choose?
>  
> >>(ii) makes perfect sense to me. I believe that the bean counter is the
> decider :) but that is my personal opinion.
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Puddinhead Wilson [mailto:puddinghead_wilson007@yahoo.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:43
> To: Bell, John; M. ELK; cyoung@juniper.net
> Cc: ghyan@crhc.uiuc.edu; mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
> Subject: RE: [MPLS-OPS]: some questions
> 
> 
> 
> I dont quite get this
>  
> assume edge consists of customer traffic x1, x2, x3 ,x4 etc
>  
> So we would provision core =x1+x2+x3+x4 , would we not?
>  
> now if the above equation holds true, where is the congestion?
>  
> obviously we dont (but then some people tell me they have lots of bandwidth
> which again confuses me as to why they do not)
>  
> now if that be the case, poisson and M/M/infinity models are both off, as
> M/M/infinity assumes infinite server
>  
> So can someone please point out how the M/M/infinity or even a close poisson
> or "fractal"  model makes sense here? That "fractal" the periodic nature of
> traffic over a large ensemble of time...which means you may be slow when
> accessing "mplsrc.com" coz someone ate away ur share but fast when accessing
> yahoo.com coz you ate away someone else's share....which still is as bad..
> 
> "Bell, John" <john.bell@thus.net> wrote:
> 
> It should be noted, however, that these results are only valid for traffic
> profiles that exhibit Gaussian distributions, i.e. explicitly for high
> bandwidth (>155Mbps) links carrying aggregated traffic from *lots* of
> customers, each of which is only contributing a small percentage of the
> traffic, relative to the total bandwidth.
> 
> So these results are only pertinent to high-speed Internet backbone links -
> as soon as you get near the edge, traffic becomes ill-behaved - fractal -
> and hence congestion scenarios *will* occur. That mandates some form of QoS
> in order that preferred traffic is not impacted. Hence, cases where a few
> high-bandwidth customers share a link will still need QoS mechanisms
> applied. Sad, but true! :-)
> 
> Cheers
> John
> 
> John Bell
> Network Architect
> Thus plc
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: M. ELK [mailto:elkou141061@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 01:25
> To: cyoung@juniper.net
> Cc: ghyan@crhc.uiuc.edu; mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
> Subject: RE: [MPLS-OPS]: some questions
> 
> 
> Chris
> 
> The paper " Provisioning IP Backbone Networks to support latency sensitive 
> traffic "
> from Sprint indicate/suggest that staisfying end-2-end delay requirement as
> 
> low as 3 ms require only
> 15% extra B.W above the average data rate of the traffic .
> 
> In other word , as per this paper it is not a must for QOS technique to 
> provide Video and voice over the network .
> 
> Brgds
> 
> 
> >From: "Christopher Young" 
> >To: "Guanhua Yan" , 
> >Subject: RE: [MPLS-OPS]: some questions
> >Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:16:19 -0400
> >
> >Anyone offering voice and video service to customers is almost
> >definitely doing it with some form of QOS. Extra bandwidth does not
> >differentiate between voice, video and data traffic on the same link.
> >
> >- Chris
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Guanhua Yan [mailto:ghyan@crhc.uiuc.edu]
> >Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 1:07 PM
> >To: mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
> >Subject: [MPLS-OPS]: some questions
> >
> >
> >I just read a paper:
> >www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/itcom.internet.growth.pdf.
> >It triggers some problems in my head.
> >
> >it seems that nowadays ISP backbones have overprovisioned so much
> >redundant
> >bandwidth that it is not that urgent to deploy some fancy but
> >complicated QoS
> >schemes. So my first question is: IS QOS REALLY DEAD IN THE INDUSTRY?
> >
> >In addition, in my understanding, MPLS is perfect for traffic
> >engineering,
> >compared with those old technologies like IGP-metric tuning, etc. Since
> >there
> >is so much unutilized bandwidth in the core ne! ! tworks, traffic
> >engineering is
> >also not that urgent. If the shortest path can always satisfy the
> >bandwidth
> >requirement, why does it bother to use source routing? However, recently
> >I
> >read some articles that say almost all major ISPs have deployed MPLS. So
> >my
> >second question is: what are the business motivations for deploying
> >MPLS?
> >
> >I saw MPLS VPN appear frequently on some journals recently. When
> >deploying
> >VPNs, security is obviously a big problem. Besides that, should the QoS
> >be
> >taken into consideration?
> >
> >
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