Consequences of ignoring self-similar data traffic in telecommunications modeling

This paper is concerned with the performance ramifications of "self-similar" or "fractal" data traffic upon networked systems. It is expected in the near future that communication systems will experience serious performance degregations as a consequence of this phenomena. Thus, the development of tractable models to analyze behaviors exhibited by these processes is important. Interarrival processes which possess self-similar properties are discussed and analytic queueing models to ascertain performance measurements are presented. We conclude by analysing the performance consequences of self-similar processes upon these systems.