This CAIDA effort is supported
through assistance provided by the
National Science Foundation
and
Cisco Systems

Contents:

Internet Measurement
Internet Measurement Efforts
Maximum Throughput Measurement Tools
The Mbone
Packet Collection
Simulation Tools
Statistics Collection
Traffic Analysis
Internet Measurement Visualization
Network Management Systems (NMS)

How to use the taxonomy

This table is split into two halves. The first half is a traditional table of tools, designed to be easy to browse in its entirety. The second half is a tool summary, with more information on each tool. If you think you might be interested in that tool, click on the name on the table, and that will bring you to the summary of that tool. The summary includes a pointer to a URL about the tool in question - a web page if available, or a pointer to the tool itself if not. Ultimately, this table proper only provides summaries and brief reviews, and provides pointers to more detailed information for the interested.

Unfortunately, the information provided in each summary/review reflects the tool's state at the time we look at the tool in question. Although we do try to keep the table from falling too far out of date, the information does go stale, especially prices; you should fetch the original web page or software distribution if you want to be sure of up-to-date information. Of course, we always welcome updated information.

NOTE: due to staff time limitations, the summary section has not be updated in quite some time, and will likely be removed altogether in the near future. We regret that we do not have the resources to maintain the summary section at this time.

Internet Service Monitoring

During the course of this project we have found a gap in the area of tools/data to answer the question of to what extent, if any, systemic Internet behavior is improving or degrading. Not only do we have limited data on systemic latencies, packet loss rates, and available bandwidths, but even data we do have does not allow for quantitative assessement of implications on Internet users. In pursuit of methodical collection of performance data, a new class of tools has emerged: Internet service monitors, which track response time of Internet servers, i.e., at the application layer.

Flow Tools

Flow measurement tools treat a series of packets with common source/destination attributes as a unit of traffic transmission. Abstracting Internet traffic from packets into flows yields additional insight into traffic behavior. This taxonomy includes several such tools, including the CoralReef flow monitor and the cflowd software available for use with Cisco NetFlow output.

Network Management

This table focuses on measurement for research and traffic analysis, rather than operational network management, but we do list network management systems that include sophisticated measurement components. Readers primarily interested in network management can find links to more comprehensive material on the subject at the end of the document.

More Information

Several mailing lists discuss traffic measurement and analysis tools, including the IETF/IPPM working group mail list.

Measurement Tools