Gaussian traffic revisited

The assumption of Gaussian traffic is widely used in network modeling and planning. Due to its importance, researchers have repeatedly studied the Gaussian character of traffic aggregates. However, dedicated studies on this subject date back to 2002 and 2006. It is well known that network traffic has changed in the past few years due the the increasing use of social networks, clouds and video streaming websites. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to verify whether the Gaussianity assumption still holds for current network traffic. To this end, we study the characteristics of a large dataset, consisting of traces from four continents. The employed analysis methodology is similar to that found in previous works. In addition to the analysis of recent measurements, we also perform tests for a very long measurement period of six years. Our results show that the evolution of network traffic has not had a significant impact on its Gaussian character. Our findings also indicate that it is safer to relate the degree of Gaussianity to traffic bandwidth than to the number of users for high-speed links.