Mark Allman: Internet measurement: what next?

Tue Jul 8 04:24:48 UTC 2003

E.B. Dreger wrote:
SL> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 19:47:53 +0100
SL> From: Simon Lockhart

SL> As predominantly a content hoster, I'd love to know more about the path
SL> between my servers and the end user. Stuff like how much bandwidth is
SL> available (or, potentially available, to remove the congestion issue),
SL> in real time (i.e. as fast as PMTUD works). Really stuff so I can decide

It would be tricky, but I've heard of using javascript (not applicable 
with all EU's of course) to calculate the throughput (similar to various 
bandwidth testing pages) and set the results in a hidden field which the 
user would then submit in a form. Something to ponder when designing 
your various forms.

Of course, a better method would be to ask your visitors to provide the 
information by running an applet which could feed you a lot of b/w and 
latency information. Total capacity would be a little more difficult and 
various theories used to calculate it blind don't work from dialups and 
are questionable on broadband.

With the number of people that play with SETI and other distributed 
systems, I was thinking it'd be interesting to build a 'net monitor 
based on the same premise, pulling latency information peer to peer as 
well as building path maps using the multiple views. While we have this 
to some degree, 1M 'doze boxes would provide a lot more granular detail. 
Overall performance through certain paths could also be determined.

-Jack