Internet user access via dial-up and campus wireless networks: Traffic characterization and statistics

The world changes. The World Wide Web (WWW) changed the way that people use the Internet. In the mid-to-late eighties, interactive communications with a “shell” process (Telnet) and large file transfer via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) were the most popular ways of interacting across the Internet. The Web Browser and Uniform Resource Locators changed that model. FTP and Telnet required users to know specific information about where individual resources were located across the Internet and the specific protocols that were needed to access these resources. The World Wide Web enabled users to access information without knowing these details. The network became invisible and users began to bring information to their local computer without knowing specific details about its location or format.; The functionality of the specific protocols of the Web, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the associated Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) helped designers assemble Web resources from small components that were transferred separately and independently causing the large majority of data transfers to become relatively short in duration. Network user traffic characteristics changed significantly because of this change in underlying technology.