Analyzing Telephone Network Data

Allen A. McIntosh

mcintosh@bellcore.com

As our reliance on computer networks grows, it becomes increasingly important that we understand the behavior of the traffic that they carry. Because of the speeds and sizes involved, working with traffic collected from a computer network usually means working with large datasets. In this talk, I will describe our experience with traffic collected from the Common Channel Signaling (CCS) Network. I will describe the data, how we collect it, and how we analyze it. While our CCS datasets have many of the ``standard'' features of large datasets, there are some important differences that make the analysis more challenging. I will describe our analysis tools and discuss some of the design philosophy behind them. Finally, I will discuss the challenges facing us as we strive for a better understanding of more data from faster networks.