An Experiment for Estimating Database Latency for Mobile Systems*

As ubiquitous computing begins to become a reality, the problem of estimating database performance metrics, such as database latency between mobile systems or database latencies among fixed and mobile systems, will become an ever more important issue for network engineers. The problem of estimating database performance metrics, especially latency for mobile systems, is of particular concern to military forces. This paper discusses an ongoing project for building a test bed for estimating database latencies among distributed systems that have fixed and mobile components. We are using a commercial network modeling tool, OPNET Modeler and a new module for OPNET, the Application Characterization Environment (ACE) Module to (1) build a model of a portion of a distributed network, and (2) characterize database operations for applications using the network. Our goal is to understand how the performance of distributed database processes affect the military processes of interest. This paper will: (1) describe the test bed (2) describe the status of building an OPNET model of a military network from network traffic data, and (3) provide initial results in building a model of squad-level mobile network components.