Traffic Load Scaling for Network Design

While designing network applications, one has to check their performance on a network that is loaded by realistic background traffic. For this purpose, a packet stream can be captured on a network to obtain real background traffic. When the application has to be tested under various network loads, one can use straightforward techniques to alter the original captured traffic trace; for example faster replay of the packet stream. The problem with these simple techniques is that the packet stream will be altered in many ways, and thus a simple multiplication of the load inflicted by the packet stream on a network cannot be guaranteed. In this paper we will first describe a few simple techniques. Then, more complex techniques that better approach the goal of multiplying the traffic load by a known factor will be presented.