Abstract

Session

Tracing and Measurement

Paper

8-2

Full Paper

ps.gz

Title

Trajectory Sampling for Direct Traffic Observation

Author(s)

Nick Duffield (AT&T Research)
Matthias Grossglauser (AT&T Research)

Abstract:

Traffic measurement is a critical component for the operation and management of communication networks. First, traffic measurement plays an important role in traffic engineering, as part of the network control feedback loop. Second, traffic measurement is important as a verification and trouble-shooting tool. Traffic measurement can uncover anomalies and problems that are due to faults or misconfigurations, or unforeseen consequences of policy decisions. We propose a method that allows direct observation traffic flows through a domain by observing the trajectories of a subset of all packets traversing the network. The key advantages of the method are (i) it does not rely on knowledge of the routing subsystem, (ii) it does not require router state, (iii) the reduction in loads associated with measurement, both in the router making measurements, and the network reporting them.