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The netperf.net Inter-provider Network Performance Monitoring Project Avi Freedman freedman@netaxs.com. Traditional Performance Tools. ping traceroute Q: What should you ping/traceroute to? Problem - routers de-prioritize responses to ping/traceroute; may even shape ICMP.
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The netperf.net Inter-provider Network Performance Monitoring ProjectAvi Freedmanfreedman@netaxs.com
Traditional Performance Tools • ping • traceroute • Q: What should you ping/traceroute to? • Problem - routers de-prioritize responses to ping/traceroute; may even shape ICMP.
Current ping-based Tools • MCI’s traffic.mci.com page • ping-monitoring of MCI routers • always all-green • “Internet weather” sites • ping-monitoring of name servers
Then, the Keynote Study • Clearly, they understood that ping-monitoring to routers is not the way to go • So they said (presumably) let’s do HTTP - that’s what people on the ‘net do. • Attitude has been “don’t give us technical excuses; we know you’re just trying to hoodwink us”.
Keynote Study (more) • So, what are they doing? • The study consists of millions of HTTP queries from collocated machines, querying the web servers of each backbone. • Machines are collocated on sites that are often multi-homed. • Also, they do URL performance monitoring, not too badly, but negative data is not useful.
What the Study Shows • Wow, the Internet tends to be “worst” from certain cities. No, actually, from certain networks, we believe. • Their written analysis frequently says “the Internet was slow in Philadelphia”, or “the Internet was slow in Pittsburgh because of under-provisioning of fiber to Pittsburgh”.
Issues with the Keynote Test • Little scientific method • Machines are not all similar, much less identical. • Questionable statistics handling. • Some people have special 10k files, some don’t • Claim is “network performance is a much bigger factor than web server performance” • No data about how no-responses are counted.
Issues with Keynote Study, ctd. • “The Internet is slow in Pittsburgh” - not how the Internet is architected. The backbone that a site is on is much more important than what city... • MEASURING BACKWARDS! • The Keynote study may be able to show how good it is to be hosted on a given network, but not how good it is to be a browser.
Issues with Keynote, ctd. • Study always delayed 3-6 months - it’s a 3-month study released 3 months later. No real-time (i.e. useful) data. • Strange padding of numbers by multiplying by strange factors that are not well-defined so people can’t real-world correlate. • Unwillingness to release sampling code when validity challenged.
Keynote Study as SAT • With the SAT, a highly positive score is a good indicator of high potential <something>. A negative score isn’t a good indicator of anything in particular. • The Keynote study is the SAT of Internet measurement - a highly positive score is a good indicator but a negative score could mean many things.
Beating Keynote • Many providers spend lots of time trying to beat the Keynote test - dedicated server; special 10k file, replicated servers, special peering and announcing just a Keynote-only web server IP/route, with diff. connectivity. • We were going to deploy 15 optimized Sparc 1+s running Linux, with a specialized web server in the kernel that pre-computes the 10 response packets. So we said “since we have all of these machines...”
The netperf.net Study • We assert that the main issue is what network one is on, not what city one is in. • Scientific method is important. • Plan - put 2 machines on every network, or on a SINGLE-homed customer of that network. All are 16mb/200mb Sparc 1+s. • Each Query machine queries all remote Responder machines.
The Study’s Products • Our short-term goal is to have a 30-minute delayed NxN matrix set: • One of UDP packet loss (not pings) • One of TCP session establishment (10-byte HTTP request) • One of 1k-HTTP requests • One of 10k-HTTP requests • Longer-term, URL performance monitoring.
The Study’s Products (ctd) • Backbone measurement data will be semi-real time and free. • We may charge for URL performance monitoring. The raw data shows both “how good to be a server” and “how good to be a browser” on a network.
The Study’s Products (ctd) • Main goal, though - to provide useful data to network operators.
Current Status • 9 pairs of machines are deployed; data is coming in. • 10 more pairs will be sent out by the end of June. • Many backbones have welcomed such a study - concentric, savvis, epoch, ibm, ...
Current Status (ctd) • Still looking for PSI, ANS, AGIS, Digex. • Offering reciprocal collo to single-homed ISPs. • Still have software work (to subtract out congested sites).