Effects of upper-layer protocols on self-similarity of network traffic

It has been pointed out by many researchers that network traffic in LAN and WAN environments have self-similarity. However, it has not been clear why self-similarity is observed in the network traffic. Also, its impact on network performance has not been fully investigated. In this paper, we investigate the cause of traffic self-similarity in a network employing TCP/IP as its upper-layer protocol through simulation experiments. We further investigate effect of the TCP mechanism on the self-similarity of the network traffic and the effect of the self-similarity of the network traffic on the users' quality of service (QoS).