Description and Comparison to WWW Traffic WAP Traffic Description and Comparison to WWW Traffic Presented by – Amit Palshikar CSCI 5939.02 Wireless Applications Development

Acknowledgment Presentation based on Paper titled WAP Traffic: Description and Comparison to WWW Traffic By Thomas Kunz, Thomas Barry, Xinan Zhou, James P. Black and Hugh M. Mahoney Published in “Proceedings of the 3rd ACM international workshop on Modeling, analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems”, August 2000.

Contents Overview of WAP technology Background of the Study The Big Picture Mobile Browser Sessions Comparison to WWW Traffic Conclusion & Future Work

Overview of WAP technology

Background of the Study Bell Mobility – Cellular Service Provider Services in Quebec and Ontario Infrastructure -Base Stations -Interworking Functions (IWFs)

Background of the Study (2)

Background of the Study (3) Data Collected from June 1, 1999 through December 31, 1999 Size of trace files – 5 MB (Weekdays) – 3 MB (Weekends)

The Big Picture

The Big Picture (2) Growth Used more during office hours Peak between 3 and 4pm Low between 4 and 5am 95% packets smaller than 220 bytes Average packet size 101 bytes

Sessions Sequence of interactions between user and mobile browser as represented by transmissions between browser and gateway Initiated by user Ends after a delay of 90 sec. or more between successive packets

Sessions (2) Browser Session Characteristics -Avg. number of concurrent sessions is 3 -Max. number of concurrent sessions is 8 -Avg. length of browser session is 3.38 min. -maximum session length observed – 100min

Sessions (3) Activity Factor The percentage of time data is transmitted during a browser session Affects the network utilization For wireless data transfers, this AF is comparable to voice activity factor

Comparison to WWW Similarities – Differences – Daily Patterns Weekly Patterns No data to test seasonal patterns Differences – Smaller packets (95% < 220 bytes) Shorter sessions

Conclusion & Future Work Increased use necessitates need for careful network planning and resource allocation Enhance the understanding of user behavior More complete models will enable development of capacity planning and prediction tools for new PCS applications

References The WAP forum http://www.wapforum.com Bell Mobility Inc. http://www.bellmobility.com Pitkow, J.E. “Summary of WWW Characterization”. Web Journal 1999, Pages 3 - 13