End-to-End Service Quality Measurement Using Source-Routed Probes

— The need to monitor real time network services has prompted service providers to use new measurement technologies, such as service-specific probes. Service-specific probes are active probes that closely mimic the service traffic so that it receives the same treatment from the network as the actual service traffic. These probes are end-to-end and their deployment depends on solutions that address questions such as minimizing probe traffic, while still obtaining maximum coverage of all the links in the network. In this paper, we provide a polynomial-time probe-path computation algorithm, as well as a ¾-approximate solution for merging probe paths when the number of probes exceed a required bound . Our algorithms are evaluated using ISP topologies generated via Rocketfuel. We find that for most topologies, it is possible to cover more than ± of the edges using just ± of the nodes as terminals. Our work also suggests that the deployment strategy for active probes is dependent ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Fei Li, Marina Thottan
• Keywords: Active Probes, Communications, INFOCOM 2006, Service Traffic, Service-specific Probes