Topics Covered

List of questions related to each discussion topic

What are the statistical characteristics of measured traffic: Long-range dependence, heavy-tailed distributions?
What assumptions are made now based on traditional models? Are these assumptions significantly misleading?
Is network dimensioning practiced as a black art?
How can providers get useful analysis from researchers and academics?
How should funding agencies direct funding in useful directions, and maximize cooperation between providers and researchers?

What measurement capabilities exist now in switches and routers?
What traffic trace data exists? How widely available is it?
What traffic analyses have been published? How useful are they?
Are ISPs cooperating with measurement efforts?
Are ISPs conducting their own measurements?
What are standards requirements for routers and switches?
What's happening in the IETF Internet Provider Performance Metrics (IPPM) group?
What's happening in the IETF Benchmarking working group (BMWG)?
What other related standards activity exists?
Large-scale topology engineering; using imperfect measurements to do realistic and reasonable traffic management.
Who is promoting independent assessment of ISP performance?

How is the TCP/IP flow duration distribution changing? What impact?
How is the TCP/IP route locality distribution changing? What impact?
Effect of web (short-lived) traffic and MBONE (heavy) traffic.
Interaction among providers in response to new applications.
Effect of high aggregation, large number of small flows.
What is happening in the trans-Atlantic links w.r.t. TCP connection startup and efficiency? (Lothberg, Claffy, Paxson may know.)

What changes technically as network gets very large?
Is better reliability the necessary consequence of the Internet getting bigger?
How do ISPs control their networks? How would telephone companies do it under their business/technical models?
Which differences are implied by scale, which by local precedent, culture/history?

Does a more complex QoS model imply a more complex pricing model?
TCP/IP congestion control operates at the edges. How does provider take responsibility for quality/reliability of its network?
Link sharing concept; prospects for practice?
Issues of measurement related to billing.

The continuing role of the Federal Government as Internet shepherd.
Market competition and competetitors: how do they cooperate?
One-on-one relationships vs. activities en mass (such as this workshop).
Cooperation between providers and researchers.
Cooperation and interaction across national boundaries; other governments?
Creation of further focused workshops and meetings.
What other mechanisms?
Can we use technical input here to generate a list of the most important technical problems for NSF to pursue.
Establish concrete action items to take home.
Outline workshop report; identify value.