End-to-end available bandwidth: measurement methodology, dynamics, and relation with TCP throughput

The available bandwidth (avail-bw) in a network path is of major importance in congestion control, streaming applications, QoS verification, server selection, and overlay networks. We describe an end-to-end methodology, called Self-Loading Periodic Streams (SLoPS), for measuring avail-bw. The basic idea in SLoPS is that the one-way delays of a periodic packet stream show an increasing trend when the stream's rate is higher than the avail-bw. We implemented SLoPS in a tool called pathload. The accuracy of the tool has been evaluated with both simulations and experiments over real-world Internet paths. Pathload is non-intrusive, meaning that it does not cause significant increases in the network utilization, delays, or losses. We used pathload to evaluate the variability ('dynamics') of the avail-bw in some paths that cross USA and Europe. The avail-bw becomes significantly more variable in heavily utilized paths, as well as in paths with limited capacity (probably due to a lower degree of statistical multiplexing). We finally examine the relation between avail-bw and TCP throughput. A persistent TCP connection can be used to roughly measure the avail-bw in a path, but TCP saturates the path, and increases significantly the path delays and jitter.

[1]  V. Jacobson,et al.  Congestion avoidance and control , 1988, SIGCOMM '88.

[2]  Raj Jain,et al.  A delay-based approach for congestion avoidance in interconnected heterogeneous computer networks , 1989, CCRV.

[3]  Debasis Mitra,et al.  Dynamic adaptive windows for high speed data networks: theory and simulations , 1990, SIGCOMM '90.

[4]  Srinivasan Keshav,et al.  A control-theoretic approach to flow control , 1991, SIGCOMM '91.

[5]  Walter Willinger,et al.  On the self-similar nature of Ethernet traffic , 1993, SIGCOMM '93.

[6]  Thierry Turletti,et al.  A rate control mechanism for packet video in the Internet , 1994, Proceedings of INFOCOM '94 Conference on Computer Communications.

[7]  L. Peterson,et al.  TCP Vegas: new techniques for congestion detection and avoidance , 1994, SIGCOMM.

[8]  Mark Crovella,et al.  Measuring Bottleneck Link Speed in Packet-Switched Networks , 1996, Perform. Evaluation.

[9]  Janey C. Hoe,et al.  Improving the start-up behavior of a congestion control scheme for TCP , 1996, SIGCOMM '96.

[10]  T. V. Lakshman,et al.  The performance of TCP/IP for networks with high bandwidth-delay products and random loss , 1997, TNET.

[11]  Vern Paxson,et al.  End-to-end Internet packet dynamics , 1997, SIGCOMM '97.

[12]  Srinivasan Seshan,et al.  Analyzing stability in wide-area network performance , 1997, SIGMETRICS '97.

[13]  Van Jacobson,et al.  A tool to infer characteristics of internet paths , 1997 .

[14]  Tobias Oetiker,et al.  MRTG: The Multi Router Traffic Grapher , 1998, LISA.

[15]  Amr Awadallah,et al.  TCP-BFA: Buffer Fill Avoidance , 1998, HPN.

[16]  Vern Paxson,et al.  On calibrating measurements of packet transit times , 1998, SIGMETRICS '98/PERFORMANCE '98.

[17]  Albert G. Greenberg,et al.  A flexible model for resource management in virtual private networks , 1999, SIGCOMM '99.

[18]  Allen B. Downey.  Using pathchar to estimate Internet link characteristics , 1999, SIGCOMM '99.

[19]  Vern Paxson,et al.  On estimating end-to-end network path properties , 2001, SIGCOMM LA '01.

[20]  Mary Baker,et al.  Measuring bandwidth , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[21]  Scott Shenker,et al.  Endpoint admission control: architectural issues and performance , 2000, SIGCOMM.

[22]  Ashok K. Agrawala,et al.  Estimating available capacity of a network connection , 2000, Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Networks 2000 (ICON 2000). Networking Trends and Challenges in the New Millennium.

[23]  B. A. Mar,et al.  pchar : A Tool for Measuring Internet Path Characteristics , 2000 .

[24]  Mary Baker,et al.  Measuring link bandwidths using a deterministic model of packet delay , 2000, SIGCOMM.

[25]  Mats Björkman,et al.  A new end-to-end probing and analysis method for estimating bandwidth bottlenecks , 2000, Globecom '00 - IEEE. Global Telecommunications Conference. Conference Record (Cat. No.00CH37137).

[26]  Richard G. Baraniuk,et al.  Multifractal Cross-Traffic Estimation , 2000 .

[27]  Brian Neil Levine,et al.  Evaluation of a novel two-step server selection metric , 2001, Proceedings Ninth International Conference on Network Protocols. ICNP 2001.

[28]  Yin Zhang,et al.  On the constancy of internet path properties , 2001, IMW '01.

[29]  Mark Allman,et al.  Measuring end-to-end bulk transfer capacity , 2001, IMW '01.

[30]  Parameswaran Ramanathan,et al.  What do packet dispersion techniques measure? , 2001, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2001. Conference on Computer Communications. Twentieth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Society (Cat. No.01CH37213).

[31]  Srinivasan Seshan,et al.  Enabling conferencing applications on the internet using an overlay muilticast architecture , 2001, SIGCOMM '01.

[32]  George Yang,et al.  Network Characterization Service (NCS) , 2001, Proceedings 10th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing.

[33]  Mark Allman,et al.  A Framework for Defining Empirical Bulk Transfer Capacity Metrics , 2001, RFC.

[34]  Manish Jain,et al.  Pathload: A Measurement Tool for End-to-End Available Bandwidth , 2002 .

[35]  A. Pasztor,et al.  The packet size dependence of packet pair like methods , 2002, IEEE 2002 Tenth IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service (Cat. No.02EX564).

[36]  Hari Balakrishnan,et al.  Resilient overlay networks , 2001, SOSP.

[37]  Manish Jain,et al.  End-to-end available bandwidth: measurement methodology, dynamics, and relation with TCP throughput , 2003, IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw..