On the temporal characteristics of video traffic

It is widely accepted that the video frame size process is long range dependent (LRD), which has been indicated by a number of statistical tests. This approach suggests the use of LRD traffic models for traffic engineering, which in many cases leads to subexponential queue tails in the network buffers. Basically, there are two concepts that are considered as the origin of LRD in video modeling: self-similarity and heavy tailed level durations. In this paper we argue for a new approach, where the frame size sequence is described by three processes representing three explicit time scales, all of them having a physical meaning. We demonstrate that this concept serves as an explanation for the outcome of the LRD tests. The properties that are attributed to long range dependence in fact seem to be the result of non-stationarity of the large time scale process. We also show that the high frequency component is short range dependent, thus questioning the presence of long range dependence in video traffic.