MRTG in Fourier Space

Wed Apr 22 00:12:04 UTC 2009

Maybe a slightly off topic math-geek kind of question to
take time out from the ARIN/death-of-IPv4/IPv6-evangalist
thread of the week.

Has anyone found any value in examining network utilization
numbers with Fourier analyses? After staring at pretty
MRTG graphs for a bit too long today, I'm wondering if
there are some interesting periodic characteristics in the
data that could be easily teased out beyond, "Well, the
diurnal fluctuations are obvious, but looks like we may
have some hourly traffic spikes in there too. And maybe
some of those are bigger every fourth hour."

A quick Google search turned up nothing at all. With many
EE-types who find their way into network operations and
wannabe-EEs already there, I found that maybe a little
surprising. I know the EEs love Fourier transforms.