Federal Collaboration in Internet Statistics Collection
(position paper for workshop: Statistics/Metrics: Implications for Federal Agencies)

Slides presented at the NSF sponsored workshop on Internet statistics measurement and analysis held at SDSC 19-20 Feb 1996.

Phillip Dykstra
Federal Networking Council
Eng. and Ops. Working Group, co-chair

Army Research Laboratory
Attn: AMSRL-SC-CC
APG, MD 21005-5067
Voice: 410-278-8608
FAX: 410-278-9199
Email: phil@arl.mil

Federal Collaboration

• The Federal networks and government has *some* influence over the internet and can help provide focus
• We would like industry to do it
• We have a traditional role of collecting and publishing data of national interest

The FNCAC Asked for...

• Requirements for service models
• Accounting and pricing architectures with incentives to place a value on resource consumption
• Broad integration of security and privacy measures
• Cost/benefit tradeoffs of "doing" or "not doing" things

The Bitstream is Important

• Bandwidth planning
• Topology planning
• Problem identification (failures, routes, etc.)
• Service planning
• Types of flows e.g. emergence of many small transactions (HTTP) and long sustained flows (MBONE)
  
• Deployment of security

Engineering Isn't Everything

• Not everything is in the bitstream # of routes and route stability
  # of NSP's
  # of users
  User satisfaction
  Demographics (Nielson families/ratings) Health/Security (cancer statistics)
• Wise investment requires lots of data
• Leading Internet Indicators (LII)? New starts?
  Consumer confidence?
  Excess capacity (always = 0?)

Issues

• How to measure "the net" when no one owns it? What is the federal role and relations?
• Who is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics? The government, a private-sector org., etc.?
• How can privacy be ensured? Can we looks beyond packet headers?