The main objective in telecommunications network engineering is to have as
many happy users as possible. In other words, the network engineer has to r
esolve the trade-off between capacity and QoS requirements. Accurate modeli
ng of the offered traffic load is the first step in optimizing resource all
ocation algorithms such that provision of services compiles with the QoS co
nstraints while maintaining maximum capacity. In recent years, as broadband
multimedia services became popular, they necessitated new traffic models w
ith self-similar characteristics. In this article we present a survey of th
e serf-similarity phenomenon observed in multimedia traffic and its implica
tions on network performance. Our current research aims to fill the gap bet
ween this new traffic model and network engineering. An immediate consequen
ce of this study is the demonstration of the limitations or validity of con
ventional resource allocation methods in the presence of self-similar traff
ic.