End-to-end network delay model for heavy-tailed environments

Adequate quality of Internet Protocol (IP) services demand low transmission delays. However, packets traveling in a network are subject to a variety of delays that degrade severely the quality of service in real-time applications. This paper presents a general packet jitter-assessment methodology for a multi-node path in the presence of heavy-tailed traffic. Using the extreme-value theory, it is shown that delay performance is governed by a proposed networking-processing factor \T\(lambda) dependent on the traffic characteristics, the processing time along the path segments and the number of nodes in a route. \T\(lambda) allows the establishment of design constraints and the definition of a feasibility space for a routing algorithm in order to guarantee a quality of service (QoS). Copyright (C) 2003 AEI.