We present and discuss stream size and lifetime distributions for web and non-web TCP traffic on a campus OC12 link at UC San Diego. The distributions are stable over long periods, and show that on this link only 3% of the streams last longer than one minute, and that only about 0.5% of them are bigger than 100 kBytes. Although there are large streams (elephants) on this link, the bulk of its traffic is composed of many small streams (mice).
Nevil Brownlee, Kimberly C. Claffy