Subject: Statistics Workshop invitation, 19-20 February 96 To: isma
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 95 16:49:57 PST
Status: RO

Re: invitation to an NSF workshop on

      Internet statistics, measurement, and analysis
      19-20 February 96

Dear colleague:

The existence of the NSFNET as a "central network" for the research and education community facilitated research into aspects of aggregate network traffic patterns and the anomalies in those patterns caused by the introduction of new or unique applications. Decommissioning the centralized NSFNET backbone resulted in an environment with no dependable public source of statistics on Internet workloads. Gaining insight into the nature of current workloads and their resource requirements, as well as how they change over time, is essential to supporting Internet evolution.

For example, the disparity in workload profiles within the current cross section of Internet applications, ranging from high bandwidth-duration multimedia to historically less demanding e-mail or remote login, will necessitate revised metrics for describing aggregate network behavior. Simple mean or peak utilization figures will be dangerously ineffective in addressing a service provider's needs, without also knowing the `transaction' profile constituting and perhaps dominating those figures. (See http://www.nlanr.net/Fix for examples of traffic flow profiling, including data from the FIX-West multiagency network interconnection facility.)

The NSF supported Routing Arbiter provides another source of operational statistics collection, via route servers at the NSF supported NAPs. The RA maintains NAP statistics on packet loss and latency among routing peers, BGP routing protocol message counts, route server memory utilization, and selected interface counts on the server. Links to statistic prototypes for some infrastructure and NAP facilities (the ones we could find) are at http://www.caida.org/INFO/.

To facilitate discussion among communities of academia, equipment vendors, and service providers, who share interest in and incentive to understand one another's views on network statistics and analysis, we will hold a workshop with support of the National Science Foundation. In this workshop we expect to identify, elicit and evaluate the cross sections of interest, goals, willingness, and technical capability to facilitate such studies in the new distributed environment. Critical to the discussions will be the presence of those who can set policy for design and configuration of Internet components: vendors who can design statistics collection mechanisms, and service providers who can ensure the effective deployment of those mechanisms to support their short and medium term engineering requirements.

If you would like to participate, it would help us greatly to obtain from you a short position statement in advance (either send to the organizing committee at ismac@upeksa.sdsc.edu, or, if you prefer to address to the whole list, at isma@upeksa.sdsc.edu). You will have an opportunity to discuss these views during the workshop. From the workshop we will construct a report to be distributed to the participants, the National Science Foundation, and other interested parties. We will also attempt to make position statements available via the Web in advance, as we receive them, to allow for information distribution prior to the workshop.

The workshop will be held on 19-20 February 1996 at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Attached you will find attendance information. Please confirm with us by responding to this note asap whether you expect to attend.

We have submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation to help those participants who do not have own funding to cover the travel for the workshop. If this is the case for you, please contact us for information about possible availability of such funds.

Hans-Werner Braun, and KC Claffy (SDSC), and Mark W. Garrett (Bellcore)

hwb@sdsc.edu
kc@sdsc.edu
mwg@bellcore.com

Workshop co-chairs

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The workshop venue is the San Diego Supercomputer Center, in La Jolla, California. The center is located on the UCSD, San Diego campus. A gliderport, beaches, restaurants, Scripps Aquarium and Torrey Pines Golf course are all within walking distance. The San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Horton Plaza and Mexico are just a short ride away.

We have reserved a block of rooms at the RESIDENCE INN name for a special rate of $81.00 plus tax. The Inn is located on the edge of UCSD campus. They will provide a shuttle for your convenience to and from the Supercomputer Center. Please call the Residence Inn to make your reservation with a credit card for the dates you will be attending. Peerless Shuttle (619 695 1776) will be available on about 10 minutes notice to take you to the hotel; let them know you are staying at the Residence Inn. The hotel contact for the workshop is Michelle Bartolone at 619 5871770. The name of the conference is NSF ISMA (Internet Statistics Measurement and Analysis). After January 20, the rooms will be on an availability basis only. We can provide information on alternative accommodations if desired.