North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Mark Allman: Internet measurement: what next?

  • From: Jack Bates
  • Date: Wed Jul 09 08:31:09 2003

Daniel Karrenberg wrote:

If you tell us what limits you want removed we may work on that!

Sounds like below as if you are working on it.

We are definitely working towards making the results generally
available; see http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-271.html for details
of that proposal. So far we have had very positive reactions on this
although some ISPs are worried about being exposed in comparison to
competitors who do not participate.
Raw data is important and if publicly available, I think you will find a lot of people assimilating the data in ways that others haven't thought of, as well as contributing suggestions for tests to obtain data that they feel is missing for their specific purposes.

We will also add quite detailed measurments of DNS servers for the root
and TLDs. Data has been taken for several months now. A beta version of the resulting products will be available soon.
I think this would be very useful, especially in conjunction with the current tests and the data available concerning route views.

I have been thinking about a multi-tier measurement network, adding
probes that do not have dedicated hardware and high precision clocks,
but rather conisist of just a software package. These could be deloyed
more easily.

I recommend operating system independant where possible. Store with the data the information pertaining to the testing machine. ie. Was the measurement taken over a dialup (should be detectable), what OS was it, and what version of resolver was used for dns tests? This would show performance information associated with this information as well as allowing weights in data analysis.

Path latencies in both directions, detmining if the path was a/symetrical, etc would also be useful. Of course, this information will change over time and must be resampled with each testing interval.

Take the tests to the user, and the network's involved won't have a choice on the public nature of network performance, availability, and routing. Everyone would be affected, and it would help provide an overall understanding of the 'net as a whole.

For security purposes, you could allow a blind spot, so that companies might be interested in using the testing equipment. Such a system would black out the statistics and information concerning the internal network.


-Jack