I have only a vague recollection of the “IP traffic is fractal” rage, but I don’t think anybody thought that packet inter-arrivals had long tails, especially not for multiplexed traffic. There is a kind of “central-limit theorem” that says that if you have a bunch of overlapping point processes the interarrivals look exponential.

The real question is not whether the microscopic behavior is locally Poissonian, but how do the statistics of the “macroscopic” traffic rate behave. Even physical fractals have atoms at the bottom.

PS- a preview option would be nice.