In the course of conducting traffic studies with several network operators around the world, the data analysis sheds light on the evolving characteristics of mobile broadband traffic including different content types (mix) and usage patterns. Typical content types include video, images, text, and other binary data that are transported through a variety of protocols between content servers and user applications. From a usage perspective, although the majority of today's traffic volume is delivered on the downlink, traffic is increasingly being generated from mobile devices and pushed into the uplink.
The mobile broadband traffic studies we conducted include results that consistently demonstrate power law popularity distribution (i.e., the 80:20 rule) characteristics. Most network planners are familiar with the concept of 'Elephant and Mice' user behavior that goes back to the early days of the Internet: a very small percentage of users (the elephants) generate the vast majority of network traffic by volume relative to all other users (the mice).
Analysis from one of the HSPA Node Bs observed during the traffic studies demonstrated this elephant/mice phenomenon, with 5% of mobile broadband users consuming 80% of the total traffic over a one week test period.
In another multi-site study, the following elephant behavior in the RAN (downlink traffic from the RNC to Node Bs) was observed:
- Disproportionate elephant sessions observed at all sites in the study
- Elephant sessions tended to be lengthy compared to mice sessions (median elephant session length = approximately 1.7 hours; median mice session length = approximately 34 seconds)
- Elephant sessions use multiple applications (median port count = 10)
- Elephant sessions follow daily network load usage patterns
- Differences in weekend versus weekday patterns
- Represent key driver of peak bandwidth loads during peak periods
Because elephant behavior can have a significant impact on network performance and service quality during peak periods, optimizing these elephant sessions can provide significant value to the operator.
I expect mobile broadband content mix and usage patterns will continue to evolve as new and different types of devices become available, network capabilities expand, new subscribers join the network, and content and applications proliferate. In future postings I'll explore the content mix and usage patterns in more detail.