Project Title: Bandwidth Estimation: Measurement Methodologies and Applications

Project Type: SciDAC

PI: kc claffy, CAIDA/UCSD

1 Executive summary

CAIDA is well underway with bandwidth estimation tool testing. Our testing methodology uses both simulated and real traffic, providing us with the ability to discriminate performance of multiple tools in identical environments. Several different metrics, including accuracy, time to measure, sensitivity to cross traffic, and amount of test overhead traffic, are considered in tool assessment. Test results will allow researchers and application developers to choose an appropriate tool to meet their needs.

2 Current accomplishments

Collected physical link information from ISP contacts
Evaluated use of skitter boxes to create a bandwidth estimation test mesh
summer student Stefano Masini performed initial testing of pathchar. http://www.caida.org/publications/presentations/bwestdb/
Hired UCSD grad student Vineet Kumar, added analyst Marina Fomenkov to project team
kc presented at Tarifica bandwidth seminar in Hong Kong. Slides: http://www.caida.org/publications/presentations/bw0111/
kc attended bwest kickoff meeting. Slides: http://www.caida.org/projects/bwest/presentations/bwest_kickoff/index.html
Testing methodology developed, tool evaluations prioritized, and CalNGI reference lab configured. Bandwidth Estimation Tool Evaluation and Results to Date
Per-hop (link) capacity tools under test: pathchar, pipechar, pchar, clink
End-to-end capacity tools under test: Sprobe, pathrate, nettimer
Parallel TCP connections throughput tool under test: Iperf

3 Future accomplishments

Initial bandwidth tool testing results are expected by May 2002.
An additional graduate student will be added during the summer to accelerate testing and analysis.
Install and test end-to-end available bandwidth tool pathload
Install and test bulk transfer capacity (BTC) or TCP throughput tools: bbcp, cap
Install and test end-to-end capacity tool bprobe
A methodology paper presenting all results is expected by September 2002. We plan to submit this paper to SIGMETRICS.

4 Research interactions

Hao Jiang spent a week at CAIDA demonstrating his methodology for making passive measurements of the distribution of Round-Trip-Times (RTTs). Hao analyzed some CAIDA OC48 traces. Report
Margaret Murray participated in the Internet2 End-to-end Performance Initiative Measurement Workshop Workshop Report. Margaret spoke with Thomas Ndousse, and made important contacts with Les Cottrell and Martin Swany.
kc claffy worked with Constantinos Dovrolis and Jin Guojun to formulate a statement of work for Jin's per-hop measurement efforts.
Margaret Murray arranged to access SDSC's CalNGI Network Performance Reference Lab Network Test Access System (NTAS) for tool evaluation, in collaboration with Kevin Walsh.
Received bandwidth measurement data from Les Cottrell. Looking to correlate our results with his data (See: http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/bw/ and also evaluate different visualization strategies.
kc claffy, Constantinos Dovrolis, and Mark Allman began working on a draft RFC entitled "End-to-end Throughput Performance Metrics"

5 Remarks

We look forward to continued fruitful collaboration with Constantinos Dovrolis as he moves to his new position at the Georgia Institute of Technology around July 15.