Analysis and characteristic at the chat session level in instant message traffic

  • Fei Hong*
  • , Rui Liu
  • , Liting Hu
  • , Yu Bai
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Instant messaging (IM) has become increasingly popular due to its social functionality. Despite its popularity and large user base, little has been done to the analysis and characteristic of the IM traffic, especially at the chat session level. In this paper, we analyze the traffic of two popular instant messaging systems, Yahoo messenger and MSN/Windows Live Messenger. We mainly consider the distribution of chat session level traffic between end users, and find the distribution in many cases follows a power law, as shown in recent work. This power law finding was previously used to support the hypothesis that chat interval time has a power law tail. We further show the scale property by V-T plot and R/S estimation. That is, the interval time is characterized by a strong self-similarity for larger time scales. And the packet arrival times are independent explaining the weak correlation of the data. Our analysis sheds light on instant messaging system design and optimization and provides a scientific basis for instant messaging traffic generation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2009 1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering, ICISE 2009
Pages1666-1669
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Event1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering, ICISE2009 - Nanjing, China
Duration: 26 Dec 200928 Dec 2009

Publication series

Name2009 1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering, ICISE 2009

Conference

Conference1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering, ICISE2009
Country/TerritoryChina
CityNanjing
Period26/12/0928/12/09

Keywords

  • Chat session
  • Instant message traffic
  • Scale
  • Social network
  • r/s estimation

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