Routing and Capacity Optimization Based on Estimated Latent OD Traffic Demand

This paper introduces a method to estimate latent traffic from its origin to destination based on the link packet loss rate and traffic volume. Using the estimated latent traffic, this paper also shows that we can compute the appropriate link capacity and route of packet transfer. Observed traffic might deviate from the original traffic demand and become latent when the traffic passes through congested links because of transmission control protocol (TCP) congestion control and behavioral change in the users and/or applications owing to a degraded quality of experience (QoE). The latent traffic is actualized when the congested link's capacity is improved. When link provisioning is based on observed traffic, actualized traffic might cause new congestion at other links. Thus, network providers need to estimate the origin-destination (OD) original traffic demand for network planning. Although estimation of original traffic has been researched, the estimation was only for links. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate latent origin-destination traffic by combining and expanding techniques. One approach estimates the actualized OD traffic and loss rate from the actualized traffic and packet loss rate of links. The other method estimates the latent traffic demand. Then, using the estimated value, the link capacity and routing matrix are optimized. We evaluated our method through simulation and confirmed that congestion could be avoided by capacity provisioning based on estimated latent traffic, while provisioning based on observed traffic retained the congestion. The combined method can avoid congestion with a 23% increment of capacity compared to capacity provisioning only.