A proposal submitted to
We are proposing that NSF help to seed the effort as a charter
CAIDA member. This proposal covers the initial three years of
seed support for CAIDA research and development efforts.
Complementing an industry-wide effort with government support
will promote balance among the needs of the various communities
(private, research, government, and users), and facilitate the
near term development and deployment of critical measurement
technology and techniques.
1.0 Internet Infrastructure Consortium
As the era of the NSFnet Backbone Service came to a close in April
1995, the community lost the ability to rely on what was the only set
of publically available statistics for a large national U.S. backbone.
The transition to the new NSFnet program, with commercial operations
providing both regional service as well as cross-service provider
switching points (NAPs), has virtually eliminated the public
availability of statistics and analysis at the national level.
Currently, there is no centralized control over Internet service
providers (ISPs). ISPs do not always coordinate their efforts with each
other, and quite often are in competition. Nevertheless, the National
Information Infrastructure (NII) continues to drive funding into
hardware, pipes, and multimedia-capable tools, with very little
attention to any kind of underlying infrastructural sanity checks. The
market for IP access provision is now estimated at more that $720
million -- upwards of $2 billion if information providers such as AOL and
Compuserve are included. (src: Maloff Company's 1996 IAP Marketplace Analysis Report)
Obstacles to the collection and analysis of traffic data on the
commercial Internet include political, legal (privacy), logistical, and
proprietary considerations. Data acquisition will be further
complicated by networks transitioning to high speed switched
technologies (e.g., ATM, switched FDDI).
In this environment, it may no longer even be
technically feasible to access IP layer data in order to do traffic
flow profiling, certainly not at switches within commercial ATM clouds.
Many newer layer 2 switches, e.g., DEC's gigaswitch, and ATM switches
generally, have
little if any capability for performing layer 3 statistics collection,
or even looking at traffic in the manner allowed on a broadcast medium
(e.g., FDDI, Ethernet), where a passive listener can collect
statistics without interfering with switching. Statistics collection
functionality in newer switches takes resources directly away from
forwarding of frames/cells, which may have the effect of
driving customers toward switches from
competing vendors who sacrifice such functionality in exchange for
speed.
Recognizing the implications of these transitions, the National
Laboratory for Applied Networking Research (NLANR) took steps in mid
1995 (with funding by NSF and support by the Federal Networking
Council) to position measurement equipment at the federally-owned
FIX-West exchange point. Results of FIX-West traffic characterization
have been presented at numerous venues over the last year,
including the Federal
Networking Council Advisory Committee meetings, NANOG, and IETF
meetings.
NLANR's mission extends to serving `as a vehicle to integrate
issues in economics and cultural network penetration with application,
architecture and engineering research'. In this capacity, NLANR worked
with Bellcore to host an NSF-supported workshop entitled Internet
Statistics and Metrics Analysis in February 1996.
Workshop participants
articulated a need for smoother coordination and information exchange
among Internet service providers -- both providers of Internet
access and traffic exchange services.
Although most participants at the workshop felt that the Internet
development and provider community should seek out measurement
infrastructure and sources of statistics in the commercially
decentralized Internet, there was definite dissonance as to
which measurements would help, and who should have access
to them. While a public infrastructure for `end-to-end' measurements
could help researchers and end users study the infrastructure,
participants concurred that Internet service providers (ISPs)
themselves would be the greatest beneficiaries of an enhanced
statistics capability. Opinions varied as to the sensitivity of some
data and how much could be released publically.
Participants agreed that a neutral venue was needed for
the publication of such statistics.
A neutral forum could also facilitate more comprehensive collaboration,
consensus-building, and the development of tools to measure new metrics
that are important to stability, service, efficient resource
allocation, and more economically viable network usage pricing
policies.
NLANR (with KC Claffy, UCSD serving as PI) proposes to establish
a neutrally sponsored measurement and analysis team that could
eventually serve as a critical component of such a forum.
Indeed, this team would provide technical grounding to effectively
launch the forum, with a concrete, specific agenda that will
also promote longer term service improvements on the Internet,
The CAIDA team will concentrate on the needs outlined at the ISMA workshop: the
exchange of statistics that would assist the engineering of a multi-ISP
infrastructure. ISPs, who have thus far not devoted priority resources
to statistics collection, will find an increasing need for them as
network technology, infrastructure, utilization, and cross-section of
customer profiles grows.
1.2 Need for an Industry/Research Consortium
Through this proposal, we hope to promote greater collaboration between
both the Internet access and exchange providers and Internet users.
The proposal sets forth tangible goals of:
1.3 Role of the Government
The Federal Networking Council Advisory Committee (FNCAC) addressed
this role in their December 1996 recommendations on
Internet Statistics and Metrics.
According to the FNCAC, FNC agencies should strive toward:
Consistent with these sentiments, government agencies are initiating
internal efforts to assess the state of the Internet and the
implications of increasing congestion upon their ability to achieve
agency missions and serve their research constituencies. (See the
meeting summaries.)
Given the level of measurement research and data acquisition/analysis
underway by or for federal agency networks, we anticipate forming close,
cooperative technical relationships with specific federally sponsored groups,
for collaboration on the development of complementary measurement
tools and testing and deployment of measurement platforms
across the federal R&E network infrastructure.
In addition, certain federal agency networks may choose to participate as
members of the consortium.
Similar technical relationships and membership may also be appropriate for
non-U.S. government research networks. Research networks in Europe, for
example, do not utilize commercial backbones, and may be particularly
interested in participating in both the research and data sharing components
of the consortium. Within the constraints of U.S. antitrust law, who
participates in what capacity will be determined by consortium members.
The technical emphases would be on: (1) testing the utility
of such a forum as a vehicle to address engineering concerns that would
benefit from cross-ISP coordination; and (2) developing
and proposing of a set of standard criteria by which consumers could
compare the quality of service offered by different ISPs. Associated
policy emphases would include establishing a framework
which, over
time, could be used to promote greater industry cooperation in the
architecting and management of the global Internet infrastructure.
Examples of statistics analyses of immediate relevance to
providers include using measurements of: round-trip-time
(RTT), e.g., with ping, to assess congestion and other conditions
at an infrastructure-wide level; routing behavior
(extensions of data and tools from the Routing Arbiter project),
to assess status and stability, as well as unusually configured
routing and more specific routes in the presence of less specific routes.
The consortium could also work with member ISPs to define and engineer
multicast and caching topologies that would benefit from leveraging
across ISPs, and seek mechanisms to promote data sharing in areas such
as matrices of traffic flow among autonomous systems (ASMs) and network
outage reporting.
Examples of information that might be published include
round-trip-time figures collected from a variety of sources.
We hope to form the consortium through the participation of major
ISPs. AT&T, for example, has expressed support for the
initiative and interest in being among the founding members.
Microsoft, MCI, Nokia, Sprint, Cisco, ANS, and BBN Planet
have all also expressed interest in participation.
Digital, Ipsilon, ANS and BBN have already contributed
human resources to CAIDA activities.
Participation of major ISPs and vendors would both
distinguish them as industry leaders and set them apart from providers
who lack a fundamental commitment to the overall Internet
infrastructure. Data collection would be facilitated in one of two
ways (depending on the preference of members):
On a case-by-case basis, and with proper privacy agreements, the
consortium will likely want to allow researchers, within or affiliated
with member companies, access to specific data samples
for the purpose of developing estimation and prediction
methodologies, and vendor engineers similar access for the purpose of
improving router operation.
While consortium members may ultimately choose to make data publically
available, we anticipate that such availability would be gradual,
dependent upon members' realization
of tangible benefits related to dissemination. In
addition, we anticipate that the members may choose to impose strict
guidelines and/or penalties for misuse of consortium data. In particular,
provisions in the bylaws (or other mechanisms) may be employed to ensure that
network sensitive data is not exploited or otherwise misused for competitive
advantage by a consortium member.
Many of the project deliverables will be administrative:
clarifying and refining concepts of collaboration/cooperation
and organizational structure/relationships among ISPs/users,
formalizing the technical processes,
expanding participation (including internationally),
and supplementing/replacing public funding with
private sector contributions as CAIDA moves toward a fully
independent non-profit organization. We detail the
timelines of these deliverables in the following section.
We will also provide quarterly and annual status reports.
Quarterly reports will detail
In addition to these deliverable reports,
CAIDA will prepare and distribute informal outreach
materials via the web or paper copy. These materials
will include specific analysis of Internet traffic
conditions or other aspect of Internet operations.
2.1 Phase I: the building blocks (0 - 12 months)
Measurements that can provide providers with data relevant to
maintaining and extending their networks are perceived as having a
positive return on investment for commercial service
providers. With this critical business motivation in mind, we propose
to initially target statistics that will support:
b. clarifying concepts of
collaboration/cooperation among ISPs/users
Given the nascent stage of the market and the rapid growth
characteristic of the industry, there has been little time or attention
to collaboration/cooperation among service providers and between
providers and the user community. During the first months of this
effort, we will develop and implement
a framework for interaction among these groups.
c. clarifying organizational structure/relationships
Legal issues are fundamental to the definition of an organizational
structure for the consortium. During the initial stages of this effort,
UCSD will work directly with the legal departments of the
founding members to identify legal and privacy considerations
related to the new forum and to draft the appropriate agreements and
other documents.
During this year, CAIDA staff will begin the process of weaning
the consortium from the UCSD administrative infrastructure.
Alternatives for bookkeeping, legal and other support will be
explored in anticipation of becoming an autonomous entity during
year 2.
d. establishing the non-profit organization
By the second half of year 1, the consortium will be formally chartered as a
501 (c) non-profit organization. This step will include agreement upon the
consortium's bylaws, antitrust and privacy agreements, and
application. The Board of Directors
and corporate officers will also be identified.
2.2 Phase II: implementing the vision (6 - 24 months)
Formalizing technical processes will begin concurrent with
organizing the consortium. Table 1 lists some possible metrics
and an indication of its relevance to Internet settlements
and/or workload/performance evaluation. The CAIDA team
will coordinate with founding consortium members to set
priorities on which metrics to track and which tools
to develop/deploy, and how to collect and visualize/present
the data. They will then work with the ISPs and other
research groups (as appropriate) to implement these priorities.
Measuring the throughput or flow capacity of a live connection without
detrimental performance impact is difficult.
In theory, flow capacity is also amenable to path decomposition, i.e.,
one can approximate the flow sustainable across a path by the minimum
of the flows sustainable across each of the components of the path.
In practice, however, buffering characteristics and
routing asymmetries impose `friction' in the system,
limiting the viability of the formal definitions.
We will need to compare several alternatives for empirical metrics,
and qualify the degree to which they deviate from the
corresponding formal metrics.
It will be essential to develop a methodology to estimate
sustainable throughput from some baseline flow capacity
measurements in conjunction with current delay measurements.
NLANR researchers at PSC have developed one
possible tool to measure transport layer performance,
treno,
with a descriptive paper published
in Inet '96.
Future data activities may stretch beyond the network layer toward
optimizing overall service quality via mechanisms such as
information caching and multicast. Visualization
is important for making sense of all the data sets described above, and
is especially critical for developing and maintaining the efficiency of
logically overlaying architectures, such as caching, multicast, mobile,
IPsec, and IPv6 tunnel infrastructures. Examples include
b. expanding participation
At this stage, expanding participation will receive high priority,
to include additional representatives from four
illustrative categories: 1) National
Service Providers (NSPs) and National Access Point (NAP) providers; 2)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Peering Exchange providers; 3) Special
Members, including equipment and software venders; and 4) Research Networks,
including Federal and internationally recognized research networks (e.g.,
networks participating in the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental
Research Networks, CCIRN) . Participation by members will be in terms
of both private sector financial support and data acquisition/sharing.
c. developing analytic capability
Initial tool development and data analysis priorities
will be set during the first six months. The CAIDA team
will collaborate with other principal investigators and research
institutions, including participants in the Common Solutions Group (CSG)
proposed measurement infrastructure initiative. The contortium will
establish guidelines through which researchers (from academia,
telecommunications firms, and elsewhere) can submit brief proposals
requesting access to CAIDA-specific data sets and will encourage
collaborating institutions (e.g., the CSG initiative) to do likewise.
Criteria for access will include the benefits of the research to
the overall Internet community and the willingness of researchers
to abide by the consortium's guidelines with respect to privacy
and confidentiality.
Such collaborations will be critical to furthering the state-of-the-art in
this sector and ensuring that information sharing among
the numerous international entities with interests in
this area are kept informed and/or directly involved.
2.3 Phase III: weaning the consortium (12 - 36 months)
b. encouraging international participation
c. reassessing charter/structure
3.1 NLANR's Involvement
In the statistics arena, NLANR and those associated with it have
distinguished themselves as leaders in Internet measurement. At SDSC,
Hans-Werner Braun and K.C. Claffy collected and analyzed
traffic flows through the FIX-West exchange point for more than a
year. Claffy and Bilal Chinoy have worked with the NSF-supported NAPs
to make public their traffic data. Claffy, Dave Siegel (RTD) and Bill
Woodcock (Zocalo) have developed and deployed common data file formats across
Metropolitan Internet exchange points (MIXes). Eric Hoffman
(prev. Ipsilon, now with NLANR) is
developing a tool for monitoring congestion along Internet paths.
Other NLANR sites are also engaged in measurement activities. Matt
Mathis and Jamshid Mahdavi (PSC) are continuing their work on TCP
performance issues with Sally Floyd (LBL) and Allyn Romanov (Sun),
presenting the SACK Internet Draft at the March 1996 IETF,
and publishing a related paper in Sigcomm '96. Both are currently
working on implementations, focusing on NetBSD and Digital Unix,
which they will test over both the vBNS and commodity network as soon
as they are completed.
3.2 Liaison to R&E community: (NIMI, Common Solutions Group,
DOE and NASA activities)
NLANR researchers Matt Mathis and Jamshid Mahdavi of PSC,
in collaboration with Vern Paxson (LBL), have proposed a National
Internet Measurement Infrastructure on which to deploy
performance assessment software. They intend to enhance the
current NPD software to be more industrial strength, but
hardly more intrusive than ntpd, and then initially
deploy it on research and federal agency infrastructure.
Federal agency networks such as DREN and AAInet have already
expressed interest in contributing bootstrapping
resources to such a measurement infrastructure.
In particular, the DOE has already begun
extensive measurements to ascertain the performance their
users receive, both domestically and internationally.
NASA has already and will continue to provide NLANR with
support for placing a
measurement machine at FIX-west, which has become one of
the few if not only publically available source of workload
characteristics on the public Internet.
In the educational domain, the Common Solutions Group
have expressed plans to make selected campus infrastructure
available for deploying objective performance assessment tools,
has also already approached NLANR about tool deployment on
their infrastructure.
NLANR would offer or coordinate initial
support for probes as desired by these communities,
as CAIDA focuses on fostering research relationships
with the commercial community.
3.3 NLANR/RA collaboration
3.4 CAIDA as an Autonomous Organization
We hope to hold an
organizing workshop meeting of founding members and other
key individuals around March 1997. Specific goals for this
meeting include reaching agreement about
4.2 Follow-on to ISMA - April 1997
NLANR's role will be to assist in the design of the workshop. In her
role as as PI of the CAIDA measurement and analysis research
team, KC Claffy would encourage participation by other members of
the consortium and lead discussions related to consortium
requirements with respect to tool development/deployment and
data analysis. Another institution might contribute with
logistical coordination of this event (with government/private sector
funding). The RFC's discussed during the IETF's Internet Provider
Performance Metrics (IPPM) working group session in December 1996 would
be covered, as would initial priorities identified by CAIDA members.
Goals include:
An initial meeting of the Board of Directors is tentatively
scheduled for mid-1997. At this meeting, the Advisory Members
will review progress related to metrics definition, tool
development/deployment, and reporting as well as the status of the
organizing materials necessary to formally establish the
organization. The Board of Directors will also review the consortium's
business plan for operation and expansion during the first formal year of
operation.
The core CAIDA statistics/metrics personnel
will meet on a monthly basis via Internet
multicast conferences, to which key technical
staff from consortium members are also welcome.
Members will establish schedules and detailed plans
for how (and what) data to collect/analyze.
Other working groups might include the following: a) a Quality of Service
(QoS) working group, focusing on audits/settlement issues;
b) a Strategic Planning working group which would provide internal reports
to members on emerging technologies and specific traffic patterns/issues and
general reports to consumers on the state of the Internet; c) over time, an
Education/Outreach working group.
In addition to directly engaging participants from these important
organizations, consortium members will be encouraged to make regular
presentations before these bodies. We also anticipate close
coordination between the consortium and the IETF's Operational Area
Directorate (co-chaired by Scott Bradner and Michael O'Dell)
and its IPPM working group (co-chaired by Guy Almes and Matt Mathis).
5.2 Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
Since CAIDA's ultimate goal is exist soley via
functional support from ISPs and significant upstream
providers to ISPs (i.e., Internet equipment vendors),
fostering and extending these relationships
will occur as quickly as possibe.
5.3
Major User Groups (Educom, FARNET, auto industry)
In addition to the federal sector, major user groups are now viewing
the Internet as mission critical and are forming task groups to
begin the process of defining their QOS requirements. These groups
include: the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) and higher
education (through FARNET and Educom's Networking and Telecommunications
Task Force(NTTF)). Applications developers are also placing increasing
importance on their ability to monitor Internet performance as it affects
their own products. Coordination with these and other representatives from
the user community will be important in assisting ISPs to be more responsive
to their customers' data and other related needs.
5.4 The Routing Arbiter Project
5.5 Others (Canarie, CIX, CommerceNet, ISOC, Terena,
XIWT, RIPE, APNIC, etc.)
Telecommunications regulators are also interested
in this emerging business sector. Regulators in
countries such as Singapore, for example, have
defined preliminary QoS business metrics for ISPs
and are beginning to measure performance.
The proposers have already been approached by
Canarie, Terena, CIX, and CommerceNet regarding
measurement efforts and what methodology and
tools to best deploy. CAIDA tool development
will progress taking into account the concerns of
these constituencies.
6.2 General Grant/Subcontract Management
6.3 Business and Data Management
Data Management: Overall management of the data
acquisition, processing, and analysis will reside with the CAIDA PI and
task leaders. Tasks include (task lead in parentheses):
6.4 Budget Justification
The budget includes funds for travel to conferences on Internet
engineering to deliver results, standards bodies in
order to participate in the formation of relevant standards,
and meetings with individual organization and smaller
working groups for purposes of coordination.
We require a small number of medium range workstations
and storage devices in order to
perform bulk data analysis and
support interactive data visualization.
We will use smaller, minimal workstations (PCs or equivalent)
as data collection boxes at major interconnection points
and to serve as intermediate collection and digestion points.
Because such a large portion of the proposed work involves
visualization and dissemination of data analysis,
we must support minimal distribution formats: in particular,
we need medium grade color printing facilities and
the ability to produce computer animations on videotape for
widespread distribution.
Costs to defray base level internet connectivity to appropriate
provider are required as CAIDA is a distributed organization and thus
cannot depending on shared connectivity costs for the prinicipal
technical staff. The lowest cost option will be used to connect remote
developers when other access to the internet is unavailable.
7.0 Results from Previous and Current Awards
The principal investigator has been working on NSF-funded projects
for six years, including a proposal for network analysis (NCR-9119473)
that supported her doctoral research. During graduate school
and since graduation she has been working with the NSF
Division of Networking, Communications and Research
Infrastructure (DNCRI) under several funded cooperative agreements
and grants. As a member of Hans-Werner Braun's
technical staff during his tenure at SDSC, Claffy was
closely involved with his focus on NREN Engineering issues
in an advisory capacity for DNCRI. The cooperative nature
of the association allowed us to focus on NSF mission-specific
projects and proposals. In particular, they estabished
the NLANR project itself
(http://www.nlanr.net/),
which has since considerable attention from the community with
respect to networking statistics measurements and analysis issues.
NLANR has spawned several other infrastructure-related projects:
K. Claffy, Hans-Werner Braun (SDSC) and Mark W. Garrett (Bellcore)
hosted an NSF-sponsored NLANR workshop on
Internet statistics, measurement, and
analysis (NSF Proposal/Award number NCR-9530668)
(https://www.caida.org/workshops/isma/),
One of the most community visible ongoing NLANR projects
is the NLANR caching system
(A Distributed Testbed for National
Information Provisioning,
NSF Proposal/Award number NCR-9521745).
(http://www.ircache.net/),
Co-principal technical investigator Duane Wessels is
also involved in the statistics efforts that Caida
will embrace.
The principal investigator is also involved in a
project sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM for the
development of a prototype for an
Internet engineering curriculum repository
(https://www.caida.org/projects/iec/),
for instructional materials on Internet
curricula topics.
(CAIDA)
the National Science Foundation
Contents
Summary of proposal
The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
seeks to promote greater industry cooperation in architecting and
managing the Global Internet Infrastructure. It will address global
engineering concerns that are highly dependent upon cross-ISP
coordination, particularly those requiring measurement of Internet
metrics. It will also address ISPs' emerging need for technical
mechanisms to facilitate service guarantees and financial settlements
between providers. Specifically, the CAIDA will endeavor to:
The goal is to have both government and industry participate in CAIDA's
creation. The initial vision of CAIDA is as a supporting framework
for a set of active tasks to be defined in real time in conjunction
with CAIDA members. There will be three modes through which tasks
will be defined: proposed by CAIDA researchers themselves to an
individual or set of CAIDA sponsoring members; jointly proposed by CAIDA
researchers and CAIDA sponsoring members; or solicited by a single
or set of sponsoring members to CAIDA.
1.1 Current Situation
( https://www.caida.org/publications/papers/1996/metricsurvey/metricsurvey.html has an NLANR survey of current activities)
In Routing in a Multi-Provider Internet, Y. Rekhter
writes
Despite all the diversity among the providers, Internet-wide IP
connectivity is realized via Internet-wide distributed routing,
which involves multiple providers, and thus implies certain
degree of cooperation and coordination. Therefore, there is a need
to balance the providers' goals and objectives against the public
interest of Internet-wide connectivity and subscribers' choices.
Further work is needed to understand how to reach the balance.
Federal agencies have expressed interest in playing a continuing role
in the development, testing and deployment of new networking
technologies. Indeed, although a less powerful force in the
operational Internet than in the past, as a major user with
mission-critical Internet requirements, the federal government
continues to play a role
in facilitating discussions about the Internet
architecture and administration.
These recommendations were consistent with their
earlier recommendation in May 1996 that the agencies
Promoting a limited exchange of statistics should have direct payback
in achieving ISP goals such as configuring and managing
interconnections based on the traffic profiles of constituent peers. We
expect that ISPs will only participate in limited data exchange within
the closed consortium if a neutral, independent, well-trusted,
technically capable team
coordinates it and assumes responsibility for collection of select
statistics. Through the consortium structure, the CAIDA team
would offer services and tools to encrypt sensitive data,
process log files, reduce and visualize large data sets,
and provide interactive, access-controlled access to
customizable reports for consortium members.
The emphasis of all data collection will be on
analyzing statistics that help the collective
engineering and evolution of the overall Internet environment, and
specifically the consortium members. While retaining an otherwise
competitive and commercial arena, this forum will allow, at the engineering
level, derivation of a set of common service metrics which are critical to
ensuring the continued vitality of the Internet.
Our project deliverables are in the spirit of many
of NCRI's projects that have established
research prototypes to seed the infrastructure
(e.g., the NSFNET, RA, NAPs, the NLANR caching project).
We intend for CAIDA to follow in this line of successful
infrastructural prototypes, and provide an initial
baseline set of metrics, tools and a user guide to
support cooperative analysis in the new environment.
The tool set will integrate components of other tools
under development in the community, and include
extended development on two CAIDA tools: anemone, a
X-window based tool for network graph drawing, visualization,
and analysis, and fish, an ICMP based tool
for end-to-end path performance assessment.
Because reasonable interpretation
of measurement results is critical to
fair assessments and evaluations, we will
publish guidelines based on the consensus of
representatives from the ISP, network research, and
large user communities.
The first annual report will focus on the administrative development of
CAIDA, including its bylaws, membership, antitrust and privacy
agreements, financial status, and other relevant details.
The second annual report will focus on the
status and accomplishments of CAIDA with respect to
facilitating global Internet measurement activities
and related Internet engineering/operational
collaborations. This report will also include a
summary of research goals and other requirements
for the final year of the grant.
The final report will summarize accomplishments in
tool development/deployment; data acquisition and
analysis; and technology transfer/cooperation among
the participating member companies and affiliated
research/academic institutions.
a. formalizing technical processes
Type Applicable where Relevance to Internet
Settlements Relevance to Analysis of Network
Performance Measurement Tools Raw Metrics:
- Access Capacity (bit/sec)
CC charge for bit rate;
equipment cost depends on bit rate
a priori - Connect Time CC charge for connect
time CC metering - Total Traffic (bytes)
transit traffic settlement between ISPs
router or access server stats;
packet/flow
sampling. - Peak burst (bit/sec sustained for n sec.)
ISP/NSP overbooks trunks
ANS's cflowd, tcpdump
RTFM meters; etc. Routing: Announced Routes (#) at
exchange points, multihomed connections
RA data and
tools,
netaxs - Route Flaps
(#) exchange points, multihomed connections
RA tools
- Stability, e.g. route up/downtime, route
transitions exchange points, multihomed connections
RA tools - Presence of more specific routes with less specific
routes exchange points, multihomed connections
RA - Number of reachable destinations
(not just IP addresses) covered by a route
exchange points, multihomed connections
RA Path Metrics: -
Delay
(milliseconds) everywhere
TBD, ping -
Flow Capacity (bits/sec) everywhere
TBD, treno - Mean Packet Loss Rate
(%) everywhere
TBD, ping-based - Mean RTT
(sec) everywhere
TBD, ping-based - HOP Counts/Congestion everywhere
TBD, traceroutes Other: - Flow characteristics (protocol profiles, cross-section,
traffic matrix, asymmetry)
exchange points, multihomed networks
ISP report - Network outage information
(remote host unreachable) individual networks
ISPs reports,
IPNmoo - AS x AS matrices Individual
networks ISP reports - Information Source connection of service provider (DNS or
RR server); content provider (web server); info replicator (MBONE router &
caches)
router or access
server stats; packet
sampling, flow meters; etc. Topology Visualization: - MBONE
Internet Infrastructure
TBD - Information
caching hierarchy Internet Infrastructure/individual
caches TBD
Notes: CC - common carrier,
ISP - internet service provider, NSP - national
service provider, TBD - to be determined
Sources: Metrics for Internet Settlements, B. Carpenter (CERN), Internet
Draft, May 1996;
A Common Format for the Recording and Interchange of Peering
Point Utilization Statistics, K. Claffy (NLANR), D. Siegel (Tucson NAP), and
B. Woodcock (PCH), presented at NANOG, May 30, 1996.
Many of the Internet metrics above are inherently problematic,
and still require research, in areas such measuring one-way delay,
metrics for variance and other statistics of delay distribution
(e.g., percentiles), and dealing with asymmetric routing.
For example, for a given delay measurement, total delay across a
path equals the sum of the delay across the components of the path.
It is not clear what analogous statements one
can make regarding other delay statistics
e.g., mean, variance, percentiles.
Vern Paxson's
Towards a Framework for Defining Internet Performance
Metrics (
compressed postscript here)
published in Inet '96, presents a cogent
discussion of these issues.
While non-government financial contributions are anticipated during the
first year, we expect that CAIDA will institute a formal grant structure
following the establishment of the non-profit organization.
Initial funds may supplement organizational/technical activities,
and during the second year will begin to replace government funds.
Given the global nature of the Internet and the importance of concepts
such as resource reservation (e.g., RSVP) and settlements, we
anticipate particular interest in the consortium from international
service providers and telecommunications firms such as British Telecom,
Singapore Telecom, and others.
During the third year of operation, direct involvement by government in
the consortium will transition to that of a member. We anticipate
that the government may continue to fund R&D related to networking
statistics/metrics, but that industry will also take advantage of
CAIDA as a resource upon which to draw for studies they need
but do not have resources to pursue themselves.
The goal is to have both government and industry participate in CAIDA's
creation. The initial vision of CAIDA is as a supporting framework
for a set of active tasks to be defined in real time in conjunction
with CAIDA members. We expect there will be three modes through which
tasks will be defined: proposed by CAIDA researchers themselves to an
individual or set of CAIDA sponsoring members; jointly proposed by CAIDA
researchers and CAIDA sponsoring members; or solicited by a single
or set of sponsoring members to CAIDA.
Given industry's nascent level of understanding concerning Internet
measurements, including measurements associated with emerging ATM
infrastructure, NLANR can significantly contribute to
the development and implementation of new measurement technologies and
techniques. Over time, however, use of these technologies will become
more commonplace, and organizational control of CAIDA will
transition from UCSD/NLANR to officers of the non-profit
organization. At that time, CAIDA's affiliation with the
university and with NLANR research staff will be reexamined
in light of CAIDA priorities and goals of the member companies.
4.1 Organizing summit - March 1997
4.3 Other Meetings
the ISP industry should work cooperatively,
both with other ISPs in an industry-driven forum and with
independent user-driven initiatives, to develop, measure,
and share metrics and related information in order to continue
the growth and maturation of the Internet and to improve its performance.
Since XIWT, similar to CommerceNet, is a consolidation of
several large customers of ISPs, penetration to these groups
will provide leverage.
Once the consortium is fully operational, an executive director will be
appointed by the Board of Directors. The executive director will assume
the functions of the business manager and will oversee day-to-day
operations of the consortium. Funding for the executive director will
be provided by the consortium membership.
Supporing material and recent events:
(Expired Link); http://nlanr.net/Caida/supporting.html