Maths research to improve reliability, efficiency of Internet services

WASHINGTON - Tech savvies may soon get reliable 24-hour Internet services at a reasonable cost.

Mathematics researchers are now working on a new project that will improve the reliability and efficiency of Internet services.

The team, including researchers from the AT and T Labs Research, the research arm of US-based global telecommunications company AT and T, will synthesize Internet traffic matrices, based on the patterns of real network traffic, allowing them to test designs of communication networks.

“People use the Internet for a range of purposes, from business to entertainment, and they want a reliable 24-hour service at reasonable cost,” said chief investigator and Associate Professor Matt Roughan from Adelaide University’s School of Mathematical Sciences.

“Internet traffic is complicated and all the different applications produce different types of traffic. It is like our road and freeway networks with a complex system of arterial and feeder routes,” he added.

“In traffic management and road planning, we need to know not just how much traffic there is, but where it’s going and how a new road or block in an existing road may affect that traffic,” said Roughan.

“A traffic matrix looks at the volume, movement and type of data traffic over all tarting points and all destinations. There is a big array of numbers but, despite this complexity, Internet traffic displays simple patterns,” he added.

“This work is about discovering the mathematical underpinnings of these patterns and using them to generate new traffic matrices, against which network designs can be tested,” said Roughan.

He said the issue that network researchers had was not being able to use real Internet traffic data to test their designs because of commercial sensitivity and privacy issues.

“I must have seen 1,000 research papers optimising designs of communication networks but this large area of research has been hampered by lack of data,” he said.

“If we can overcome this and have an agreed method for generating traffic matrices, this research will leap forward,” he added.

Roughan said their research would have significant implications for network providers who need to be able to make traffic predictions to build efficient reliable networks, for network researchers who need traffic matrices to test their designs, and in scientific understanding of what makes up traffic matrices. (ANI)