On the constancy of internet path properties

ABSTRACT

Many Internet protocols and operational procedures use measurements to guide future actions. This is an effective strategy if the quantities being measured exhibit a degree of constancy: that is, in some fundamental sense, they are not changing. In this paper we explore three different notions of constancy: mathematical, operational, and predictive. Using a large measurement dataset gathered from the NIMI infrastructure, we then apply these notions to three Internet path properties: loss, delay, and throughput. Our aim is to provide guidance as to when assumptions of various forms of constancy are sound, versus when they might prove misleading.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	BPSSK98	H. Balakrishnan, V. Padmanabhan, S. Seshan, M. Stemm and R. Katz, "TCP Behavior of a Busy Web Server: Analysis and Improvements," Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '98, Mar. 1998.
	Bo93	Jean-Chrysotome Bolot, End-to-end packet delay and loss behavior in the internet, Conference proceedings on Communications architectures, protocols and applications, p.289-298, September 13-17, 1993, San Francisco, California, United States
	CPB93	K. Claffy, G. Polyzos and H-W. Braun, "Measurement Considerations for Assessing Unidirectional Latencies," Internetworking: Research and Experience, 4 (3), pp. 121-132, Sept. 1993.
	DS86	Ralph B D'Agostino , Michael A Stephens, Goodness-of-fit techniques, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, NY, 1986
	FHPW00	Sally Floyd , Mark Handley , Jitendra Padhye , Jörg Widmer, Equation-based congestion control for unicast applications, Proceedings of the conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communication, p.43-56, August 28-September 01, 2000, Stockholm, Sweden
	Gi60	E. Gilbert, "Capacity of a Burst-Noise Channel," Bell Systems Technical Journal, 39(5), pp. 1253-1265, September 1960.
	ITU96	International Telecommunication Union, "One-way Transmission Time," ITlJ Recommendation G. 114, Feb. 1996.
	Ja88	V. Jacobson, Congestion avoidance and control, Symposium proceedings on Communications architectures and protocols, p.314-329, August 16-18, 1988, Stanford, California, United States
	JBB92	V. Jacobson, R. Braden, and D. Borman, "TCP Extensions for High Performance," RFC-1323, May 1992.
	JS00	Jiang and H. Schulzrinne, "Modeling of Packet Loss and Delay and Their Effect on Real-Time Multimedia Service Quality," Proc. NOSSDAV 2000, June 2000.
	La96	J. Lanzante, "Resistant, robust and non-parametric techniques for the analysis of climate data: theory and examples, including applications to historical radiosonde station data," Int. J. Climatol., 16 (11), 1197-1226, 1996.
	LB78	G. Ljung, and G. Box "On a Measure of Lack of Fit in Time Series Models," Biometrika '65, pp. 2977303, 1978.
	MJV96	Steven McCanne , Van Jacobson , Martin Vetterli, Receiver-driven layered multicast, Conference proceedings on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, p.117-130, August 28-30, 1996, Palo Alto, California, United States
	Mu94	A. Mukherjee, "On the Dynamics and Significance of Low Frequency Components of Internet Load," Internetworking: Research and Experience, Vol. 5, pp. 163-205, December 1994.
	PF95	Vern Paxson , Sally Floyd, Wide area traffic: the failure of Poisson modeling, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), v.3 n.3, p.226-244, June 1995 [doi>10.1109/90.392383]
	PMAM98	V. Paxson, J. Mahdavi, A. Adams, and M. Mathis, "An Architecture for Large-Scale Internet Measurement," IEEE Communications, 36(8), pp 48-54, Aug. 1998.
	Pa99	Vern Paxson, End-to-end internet packet dynamics, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), v.7 n.3, p.277-292, June 1999 [doi>10.1109/90.779192]
	Ri95	J. Rice, 'Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis," 2nd edition, Duxbury Press, 1995.
	SCK00	H. Sanneck, G. Carle, and R. Koodli, "A framework model for packet loss metrics based on loss run length," Proc. SPIE/ACM SIGMM Multimedia Computing and Networking Conference, January 2000.
	SC88	S. Siegel and N. Castellan, Non-parametric statistics for the behavioral sciences, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988.
	Ta00	W.A. Taylor, "Change-Point Analysis: A Powerful New Tool For Detecting Changes", preprint, available as http: //www.variation.comfcpaltech/changepoint.html
	Wo82	R. Wolff, 'Poisson Arrivals See Time Averages," Operations Research, 30(2), pp. 2233231, 1982.
	YMKT99	M. Yajnik, S. Moon, J. Kurose and D. Towsley, "Measurement and Modeling of the Temporal Dependence in Packet Loss," Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '99, Mar. 1999.
	ZPS00	Y. Zhang, V. Paxson and S. Shenker, "The Stationarity of Internet Path Properties: Routing, Loss, and Throughput," ACIRI Technical Report, May 2000. http://www.aciri.org/ vern/papers/stationarity-May00.ps.gz
	Zh01	Yin Zhang , Robbert Van Renesse, Characterizing end-to-end internet performance, 2001