Elephant flow

Elephant flows, though not numerous, can occupy a disproportionate share of the total bandwidth over a period of time.

The actual impact of elephant flows on Internet traffic is still an area of research and debate.

Some research shows that elephant flows may be highly correlated with traffic spikes and other elephant flows (Lan & Heidemann and Mori et al.).

[5] One of the main goals of research into elephant flows is to develop more efficient bandwidth management tools and predictive models for the Internet.

[8] Elephant flows can also be viewed from the perspective of a network appliance such as an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS).

Percent of all traffic on a daily trace for the top 10 flows on a T-1 line between the US and Japan from December 2001 to May 2007. Median daily flows total about 350,000