Self-Similarity Analysis of Mobile Instant Messaging Applications' Traffic and Server

In modern times, mobile online communication through Instant Messaging is a part of many people's daily lives, which in turn forms a very complex and huge social network on Internet. In this paper, based on real traffic flow data collected from operational networks of Mobile Internet Service Provider, we analyze the traffic of several popular Mobile Instant Messaging Service in China, i.e. WECHAT, QQ, FETION. By constructing flow graphs of IM services, we list Top-five busiest IM servers, and investigate the statistical characteristics of the IM applications and servers. The traffic data is divided into data samples by a second, we aggregate packets for each group and sum packets number in different time scale, and the Self-similarity in the IM services' traffic are proposed, then the existence of Self-similarity in the IM traffic is studied and compared. Our extensive researches of the mobile traffic show that the traffic of Instant Messaging services has the characteristics of self- similarity, especially WECHAT.