new TERENA activity on European traffic measurements

Thu Nov 21 14:48:25 UTC 1996

Hi all,

Enclosed is the text of a project proposal for a TERENA activity on network
metrics and statistics collection.

As a kick off, we have created a task force mailing list for those
interested. If you would like to join, send a message to:

        listserv at terena.nl

containing only the text:

        subscribe tf-etm Your Real Name

replacing "Your Real Name" as appropriate.

Feel free to forward this to any parties you think might be interested.

Regards,

Ariel T. Sobelman

Project name: TERENA Task Force on European Traffic Studies
-----------------------------------------------------------

Justification
---------------

The problem of network traffic growth prediction may be attributed to the
difficulties associated with network operation. There is one common ground,
however, that which is the end result: performance.

Many network operators already collect basic statistics on their own
network's performance and traffic flows.  Typically, this includes
measurement of throughput, delay and availability.  However, the only
baseline against which networks evaluate performance is their own past
performance metrics.  There is no data available for national-level
comparisons with other networks' performance.  It is vital for both users
and providers to have access to information on end-to-end performance.
Such information is beyond the realm of what is currently undertaken by
individual networks.

The project objective is to collect and analyse data, which will enable
focusing on the causes of decreased performance, and proposing corrective
actions.  The activities include the development a mechanism and structure
for collecting statistics of traffic loads on an end-to-end international
level, measurements of delays, flow capacity and packet loss information.

Objectives
---------------

The vacuum created in national-level statistics/metric collection has
significantly complicated planning by member countries and service
providers.  While detailed traffic and performance measurements are
essential to identifying the causes of network problems and formulating
corrective actions, it is trend analysis and accurate network/system
monitoring which permit network managers to identify "hot spots", predict
problems before they occur, and identify ways to avoid them by efficient
deployment of resources and optimising of network configuration.  As the
explosive growth and dependence on the Information Infrastructure
continues, it is critical that mechanisms be established to enable
infrastructure planning and analysis.

This proposal describes a possible mechanism for undertaking a project to
concentrate current efforts.  It is proposed to address these problems on
two levels of relevance:

1. significance to analysis of network performance
2. relevance to Internet settlements

These activities will include cross-European measurements of total traffic
through specific links and the mapping of reachable destinations covered by
a route, Delay measurements,flow capacity, continental averages of hops,
and rate of packet loss monitoring.  These measurements will be conducted
using publicly available software packages.  The project is not anticipated
to require efforts beyond minor changes to some software.

In order to enable reliable statistical analysis, the sampling periods have
been set at 6 months per phase, from the starting date of phase I & II
experiments.

It is also intended to participate in the IPPM working group of the IETF

Deliverables:
----------------

Software kit for all participating members
        - for total traffic stats:      TCP dump samples, router stats,
Network                                                              Probe
Daemon
        - for delay measurements:       ping-based utilities, Treno
        - for packet loss stats:        To be discussed
        - Hop counts:                   traceroute

Report: Guidelines for setting up a statistics-collection operation
compatible with the rest of the project
        - guidelines for peering
        - topology of participating links

Web site concentrating the European statistics collected
        - General database with all raw data
        - various views of the data (graphical and numeric)
        - analysed data, patterns, related papers, ongoing work etc.

Report: Summary of network patterns and problems identified by the project

Report: Results of phase I, and recommendation for immediate possible
corrective steps.

Final Report: Results of traffic model.  A report on network patterns and
identification of necessary long terms predictions and recommendation for
corrective steps.

Milestones
--------------

Phase I

1. Web page with description of the project, participating partners and updates
2. List of issues that need to be addressed and agreed
3. Available equipment from participants (and document this on the Web site)
4. Structure of phase I statistics collection
5. Construction of data base
6. End of Phase I experiments and population of database
7. Analysis & evaluation

Phase II

8.  Planning of Phase 2 goals for predictive model
9.  List of issues to be addressed and agreed
10. Planning experiments phase 2
11. Begin sampling
12. Analysis & final reporting

Timeline

Phase I

November        1996:   Milestone 1 & 2
December        1997:   Milestone 3
April           1997:   Milestone 4
June            1997    Milestone 5
June- Nov.      1997:   Data collectioe phase
November        1997:   Milestone 7

Phase II

January         1998:   Milestone 8 , 9
March           1998:   Milestone 10
April-Nov.      1998:   Data collection phase
December        1998:   Milestone 12

Ariel T. Sobelman
TERENA
Singel 466-468
1017 AW Amsterdam
The Netherlands

+31-20-639-1131 (Tel)
+31-20-639-3289 (Fax)