Implementation of asynchronous performance measurement (APM) protocol for the Internet

Due to the asymmetric characteristics of links on the Internet, one-way delay measurement has become an imperative performance metric. Current measuring protocols usually rely on synchronous technique, which requires clock synchronization at all measurement sites. An asynchronous measuring protocol APM on FreeBSD platform is implemented. The implementation of APM and experiments conducted on a testbed network is described. The effectiveness and accuracy of APM against a few measuring techniques are compared. Experiment results show that APM outperforms the NTP-based synchronous measuring technique in terms of both accuracy and effectiveness. Unlike GPS-based measuring techniques, APM requires only simple installation at routers. This allows APM to be easily adopted in intranets where the networks are under the jurisdiction of a single organization.