Patent ID: 9646253
Date: 2017-05-09
CPC Classifications: G06N,H04L

Claim:
1. A method of estimating data traffic flowing through a target data or telecommunications network using a predictor network to which only a subset of the data traffic through the target network is visible, the target and predictor networks comprising a plurality of routers having ingress and egress points, the data traffic being generated within the target data or telecommunications network, the method comprising the steps of: measuring, by a processor, the generated data traffic for a predetermined time interval based on a number of bytes or a number of packets; representing, by the processor, the measured data traffic flowing through the target network between physical egress ports of source routers and physical ingress ports of destination routers as a first traffic matrix with elements corresponding to addresses of routers within the target network, wherein the measured data traffic flowing through the target network passes through physical egress ports of source routers of the target network to physical ingress ports of destination routers according to routing information; representing a portion of the measured data traffic visible to the predictor network as a second traffic matrix with elements corresponding to addresses within the predictor network, wherein the data traffic visible to the predictor network passes physical egress ports of source routers of the predictor network to physical ingress ports of destination routers according to routing information; extracting, as model inputs A, traffic matrix elements from the second traffic matrix; identifying a plurality of model parameters β based on rows and columns of the second traffic matrix; linearly estimating traffic elements ^t of the first target matrix based on the model inputs A and the model parameters β; and estimating the data traffic flowing through the target network based on the estimated traffic elements ^t.