TECHNICAL
Internet Traffic – is there an agreed definition? Earlier, I mentioned my “trawl” of several standards bodies and hence what follows are my brief observations of both the ITU and IETF approaches.
reporting, discusses how this relates to an overall network traffic flow architecture and indicates how it can be used within the Internet. 2. RFC 9522 is a first-class document (dated Jan 24) with this observer commentating that it follows the engineering thought processes of the ITU document mentioned above. The standout statement from within RFC 9522, is “Even though Internet traffic engineering is most effective when applied end-to-end, the initial focus of this document is intra-domain traffic engineering (that is, traffic engineering within a given autonomous system). However, because a preponderance
Not all IXPs measure their peak traffic using the same periodic average or use the same method. Most IXPs choose to take samples every five minutes, some have chosen to take these samples more or less frequently.
ITU
The ITU was established many years ago and evolved from what was, the monopoly telegraphy/telephone companies in countries across the globe and is currently an agency of the United Nations. Earlier, I introduced the ITU document “TERMS AND DEFINITIONS OF TRAFFIC ENGINEERING” which is an excellent example of ITU quality documentation. Unfortunately, it was first published in 1988 and is heavily biased towards circuit switching. Of relevance perhaps is the ITU-T Q.3960 Recommendation ITU-T Q.3960 (2016) “Framework of Internet related performance measurements” is worthy of investigation, if only for the diagram on page three within the ITU document – this is reproduced as Fig 4 below and describes a measurement process.
of Internet traffic tends to be inter-domain (originating in one
autonomous system and terminating in another), this document provides an overview of aspects pertaining to inter- domain traffic engineering.” Are these two IETF documents applicable to today’s Internet/internet traffic debate? – most certainly, but I wonder how many “commentators” have read them? As an observation, all the documents listed above do indeed discuss an engineering approach towards an Internet/internet engineering approach. Our challenge, and to restate, can we “learn from history?” Note and as a long-standing member of various professional bodies, I sought guidance from the plethora of conferences containing the term “teletraffic” and noted that there was an ongoing conference i.e.,” The Internet Measurement Conference” – the latest event (and previous) suggests some promise on the elusive definition.
IETF
It has been some time since I was an active participant within the IETF (time and diminishing intellectual capabilities, I am afraid). However, there are two exemplars of IETF documentation which are worthy of further discussion, viz: 1. RFC 2722 Another excellent document and in summary “This document provides a general framework for describing network traffic flows, presents an architecture for traffic flow measurement and
Figure 4: A Testing Process
Volume 47 No.4 DECEMBER 2025
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