  It is well-known that fractal signals appear in many fields of science. LAN
and WWW traces, wireless traffic, VBR resources, etc. are among the ones with
this behavior in computer networks traffic flows. An important question in
these applications is how long a measured trace should be to obtain reliable
estimates of de Hurst index (H). This paper addresses this question by first
providing a thorough study of estimator for short series based on the behavior
of bias, standard deviation (s), Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE), and convergence
when using Gaussian H-Self-Similar with Stationary Increments signals (H-sssi
signals). Results show that Whittle-type estimators behave the best when
estimating H for short signals. Based on the results, empirically derived the
minimum trace length for the estimators is proposed. Finally for testing the
results, the application of estimators to real traces is accomplished.
Immediate applications from this can be found in the real-time estimation of H
which is useful in agent-based control of Quality of Service (QoS) parameters
in the high-speed computer network traffic flows.
