US Patent 10003538 Proactive load balancing based on fractal analysis

The disclosure relates to technology for load balancing link utilization of a networking device based on fractal analysis. In one embodiment, link utilization of switches, routers, etc. in a data center is balanced based on a fractal model of the link utilization. Techniques disclosed herein are proactive. For example, instead of reacting to link congestion, the technique predicts future link utilization based on fractal analysis. Then, packet flows (or flowlets) may be assigned to links based on the predicted future link utilization. Hence, congestion on links may be reduced or prevented.