Active traffic monitoring for heterogeneous environments

The traffic management of IP networks faces increasing challenges, due to the occurrence of sudden and deep traffic variations in the network, which can be mainly attributed to the large diversity of supported applications and services, to the drastic differences in user behaviors, and to the complexity of traffic generation and control mechanisms. In this context, active traffic measurements are particularly important since they allow characterizing essential aspects of network operations, namely the quality of service measured in terms of packet delays and losses. The main goal of the work presented in this paper is the performance characterization of operational networks consisting in heterogeneous environments including both wired and wireless LANs, using active measurements. We propose a measurement methodology and its corresponding measurement platform. The measurement methodology is based on the One-Way Active Measurement Protocol (OWAMP), a recent proposal from the Internet2 and IETF IPPM groups for measuring delays and losses in a single direction. The measurement platform was implemented, tested and conveniently validated in different network scenarios.