On the Correlation of Internet Packet Losses

In this paper we analyze more than 100 hours of packet traces from Planet-Lab measurements to study the correlation of Internet packet losses. We first apply statistical tests to identify the correlation timescale of the binary loss data. We find that in half of the traces packet losses are far from independent. More significantly, the correlation timescale of packet losses is correlated with the network load. We then examine the loss runs and the success runs of packets. The loss runs are typically short, regardless of the network load. We find that the success runs in the majority of our traces are also uncorrelated. Furthermore, their correlation timescale also does not depend on the network load. All of these results show that the impact of network load on the correlation of packet losses is non-trivial and that loss runs and success runs are better modelled as being independent than the binary losses themselves.