Self-similarity of Internet packet delay

In this paper we present results which suggest that Internet packet delay, when viewed as a time series, is self-similar in nature. A self-similar phenomenon displays the same or similar statistical properties across a wide range of time scales. Self-similarity has previously been observed in the magnitude of traffic transmitted on local-area and wide-area networks. Our research is the first to explore the self-similarity of traffic delay rather than traffic magnitude. Our results imply that the delay experienced by application layer protocols is extremely bursty and that traditional Poisson models cannot accurately predict the degree of burstiness. Furthermore, we present evidence that the degree of self-similarity for a round-trip path in the Internet may be correlated with the packet loss observed on that path.