Addendum: Traffic Data Input Files

This section contains information on the traffic-related input files and their format. Many of these files are very similar: each line begins with some element ID, such as that for a demand, tunnel or interface. This is followed by a series of numbers representing the measured or estimated traffic statistics over that network element across many periods (for example, 24 hourly periods of traffic measurements collected on an interface.)

Figure 1: File > Load Network Files Window

Sample Demand Traffic Input (“trafficload” File)

The following shows a sample of a trafficload file containing 24-period traffic load data for a demand with demand ID RNode1toNode3 originating from Node1. Note that the “UNIT=1” line is important because it establishes the unit of all other numbers in the file. In this case, the unit is 1 bit per second. Some may want to change this to “UNIT=8” depending on the data.

The format for each demand entry is:

Sample Interface Traffic Input (“interface” Files)

The following is an example of an interface egress file. The ingress file has the same format.

The format for each ingress or egress entry is:

Note that a “-1” can be used as a placeholder indicating that no traffic was measured on the interface for that particular period.

Note that special unit characters such as “K” and “M” are not supported in the interface files at this time.

Also note that the Paragon Planner will use egress values if they are available. In situations where there is no egress value for a particular period, the software will check the measured ingress values and use the corresponding value. For example, for a link from Node A -> Node Z, if no value was measured for the egress traffic from Node A on the interface from Node A to Node Z, then the Paragon Planner will check the ingress value at Node Z along the same link and use that as an approximate value.