The resources required to support transmission of a traffic source, such as
video or multimedia, over a packet-switched network are heavily dependent
on the burstiness of the traffic source. The present invention provides
methods for accurately and rapidly determining burstiness curves for
traffic sources, such as elementary video and MPEG-2 transport streams.
The described deterministic computation methods provide space and time
efficiency in relation to the level of accuracy selected. The methods
teach the exploitation of the piecewise linearity within the burstiness
curves such that computations are only performed at points subject to
slope change. The efficiency of the described methods suggest wide
applicability to a range of traffic characterization situations, including
QoS provisioning as well as real-time applications, such as TV
distribution.
