Generating Event Traces Based on Arrival Curves

Inhalt:
System-level performance-evaluation methods for computer and communication systems can be divided into two main areas: simulation and analytic methods. Analytic methods are often fast but rather coarse, whereas simulation is time-consuming but often leads to more accurate results. Therefore, there is the need to (a) determine analytic models from simulation results, actual measurements or formal specifications and (b) to generate representative event traces from analytic models. Whereas there are many results available in case of statistical analytic models, there are no methods known for other forms of variability characterizations. The method presented in this paper is suited for arrival curves, a widely accepted tool for traffic characterization. In addition, this class of event models has been successfully used to perform a modular performance, end-to-end delay and buffer size analysis of distributed computer and communication systems. In particular, we propose a new method to generate event traces for simulation or physical measurements, starting from a formal specification of event streams in form of arrival curves. In addition, a quality indicator is defined to evaluate the generated traces. Finally, experiments are described that show the applicability of the approach.