Review: The Impact and Implications of the Growth in Residential User-to-User Traffic

Review: The Impact and Implications of the Growth in Residential
User-to-User Traffic

Reviewer: Di Niu

This paper reports aggregated traffic measurements collected over 21
months from seven ISPs covering 42% of the Japanese backbone traffic.
It investigates residential per-customer traffic in one of the ISPs
by comparing DSL and fiber users, heavy-hitters and normal users, and
geographic traffic matrices.

Many useful observations have been made based on the trace study.
First, the backbone traffic in Japan is dominated by symmetric
residential traffic which increased 37% in 2005. Second, a small
segment of users dictates the overall behavior; 4% of heavy-hitters
account for 75% of the inbound volume. However, this conclusion is
nothing new, since previous papers have already pointed out a certain
kind of power law in P2P systems, such as "An Analysis of Internet
Content Delivery Systems" by Saroiu et. al. and several papers by
Reza Rejaie et. al. It was also observed that about 63% of the
residential traffic volume is P2P traffic and fiber users account for
86% of the inbound volume. Moreover, the peak hours of the traffic
have shifted from office hours to evening hours, and a considerable
amount of traffic is constantly flowing.

In all, the paper could serve as a useful reference for Japanese
engineers to design their future Internet backbone according to the
new changes in the Internet. However, it appears somehow funny that
the authors were always bragging about the merits of Japanese fiber-
based broadband access and its leading role as compared with other
countries!
Received on Tue Nov 21 2006 - 01:16:49 EST