Estimating Average Round-Trip Time from Bidirectional Flow Records in NetFlow

Round-trip time (RTT) is significant to the network performance. Traditional RTT passive estimating methods are based on IP Traces, which need specialized packet capture equipment and mass storage space. This paper proposes a method to estimate average round-trip time between two hosts by analysis TCP steady traffic model, using specific bidirectional flow records in NetFlow. Test result shows that this method has acceptable error.