Active Traffic Monitoring for Heterogeneous Environments

Traffic management of IP networks comprises increasing challenges due to the occurrence of sudden and deep traffic variations that can be mainly attributed to the combined effects of several factors, like the great diversity of supported applications and services, different user’s behaviors and different mechanisms of traffic generation and control. In this context, active traffic monitoring is particularly important as it enables characterizing essential aspects in network operation, like for example, quality of service as measured in terms of packet delays and losses. The main goal of this work is to carry out active measurements in a real operational network consisting in a heterogeneous environment that includes both wired and wireless LANs. In order to perform this task, a measurement methodology, and its corresponding measurement platform, will be proposed. The measurement methodology is based on the One-Way Active Measurement Protocol (OWAMP), a recent proposal from the Internet2 and IETF IPPM groups for active measurements of delays and losses in a single direction. The measurement platform was implemented, tested and conveniently validated. This paper begins by a brief presentation of the measurements that we intend to perform, then it describes the OWAMP protocol and the developed measurement system, including its implementation, test and validation through its application to different network scenarios. keywords: Network management, traffic monitoring, active measurement, OWAMP.