Network Traffic Matrix Estimation Based on Link Loads Sampling

Traffic Matrix (TM) represents traffic between all Origin-Destination (OD) node pairs in a network, playing a crucial role in network management. While the methods for TM acquisition typically require scaling each link load in a network, measurement costs arise drastically as the number of links grows exponentially with the number of nodes. To address this issue while achieving TM with acceptable accuracy aligned with various network management requirements, the paper proposes two novel methods. The first is the ME-TMEIM (TM Estimation with Incomplete Measurement Based on Maximum Entropy) method, an efficient approach with yet acceptable accuracy. The second is the D-TMEIM (Dynamic TMEIM) method. Compared to the ME-TMEIM method, the D-TMEIM method trades the TM's acquisition accuracy for efficiency. It adds temporal constraints on network traffic to improve the precision of the obtained missing link loads, based on which the TM is generated using the CS-OMP (Compressed Sensing-Orthogonal Matching Pursuit) algorithm. Experimental results using publicly available Abilene and GÉANT networks demonstrate that the proposed methods not only enhance TM acquisition efficiency but also maintain nearly the same accuracy as the known methods that acquire TM through exhaustive links measurement.