In this paper we develop a simple analytic characterization of the steady state throughput, as a function of loss rate and round trip time for a bulk transfer TCP flow, i.e., a flow with an unlimited amount of data to send. Unlike the models in [6, 7, 10], our model captures not only the behavior of TCP’s fast retransmit mechanism (which is also considered in [6, 7, 10]) but also the effect of TCP’s timeout mechanism on throughput. Our measurements suggest that this latter behavior is important from a modeling perspective, as almost all of our TCP traces contained more timeout events than fast retransmit events. Our measurements demonstrate that our model is able to more accurately predict TCP throughput and is accurate over a wider range of loss rates. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants NCR-95-08274, NCR-95-23807 and CDA-95-02639. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Effective engineering of the Internet is predicated upon a detailed understanding of issues such as the large-scale structure of its underlying physical topology, the manner in which it evolves over time, and the way in which its constituent components contribute to its overall function. Unfortunately, developing a deep understanding of these issues has proven to be a challenging task, since it in turn involves solving difficult problems such as mapping the actual topology, characterizing it, and developing models that capture its emergent behavior. Consequently, even though there are a number of topology models, it is an open question as to how representative the generated topologies they generate are of the actual Internet. Our goal is to produce a topology generation framework which improves the state of the art and is based on the design principles of representativeness, inclusiveness, and interoperability. Representativeness leads to synthetic topologies that accurately reflect many aspects of the actual Internet topology (e.g. hierarchical structure, node degree distribution, etc.). Inclusiveness combines the strengths of as many generation models as possible in a single generation tool. Interoperability provides interfaces to widely-used simulation applications such as ns and SSF and visualization tools like otter. We call such a tool a universal topology generator. Keywords: topology generation, graph models, network topology, growth models, annotated topologies, simulation environments. 1

Abstract — The topology of wireless multihop ad hoc networks can be controlled by varying the transmission power of each node. We propose a simple distributed algorithm where each node makes local decisions about its transmission power and these local decisions collectively guarantee global connectivity. Specifically, based on the directional information, a node grows it transmission power until it finds a neighbor node in every direction. The resulting network topology increases network lifetime by reducing transmission power and reduces traffic interference by having low node degrees. Moreover, we show that the routes in the multihop network are efficient in power consumption. We give an approximation scheme in which the power consumption of each route can be made arbitrarily close to the optimal by carefully choosing the parameters. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance improvements. I.

Abstract—The steady-state performance of a bulk transfer TCP flow (i.e., a flow with a large amount of data to send, such as FTP transfers) may be characterized by the send rate, which is the amount of data sent by the sender in unit time. In this paper we develop a simple analytic characterization of the steady-state send rate as a function of loss rate and round trip time (RTT) for a bulk transfer TCP flow. Unlike the models in [7]–[9], and [12], our model captures not only the behavior of the fast retransmit mechanism but also the effect of the time-out mechanism. Our measurements suggest that this latter behavior is important from a modeling perspective, as almost all of our TCP traces contained more time-out events than fast retransmit events. Our measurements demonstrate that our model is able to more accurately predict TCP send rate and is accurate over a wider range of loss rates. We also present a simple extension of our model to compute the throughput of a bulk transfer TCP flow, which is defined as the amount of data received by the receiver in unit time. Index Terms—Empirical validation, modeling, retransmission timeouts, TCP.

Using the ns-2-simulator to experiment with different aspects of user- or session-behaviors and network configurations and focusing on the qualitative aspects of a wavelet-based scaling analysis, we present a systematic investigation into how and why variability and feedback-control contribute to the intriguing scaling properties observed in actual Internet traces (as our benchmark data, we use measured Internet traffic from an ISP). We illustrate how variability of both user aspects and network environments (i) causes self-similar scaling behavior over large time scales, (ii) determines a more or less pronounced change in scaling behavior around a specific time scale, and (iii) sets the stage for the emergence of surprisingly rich scaling dynamics over small time scales; i.e., multifractal scaling. Moreover, our scaling analyses indicate whether or not open-loop controls such as UDP or closed-loop controls such as TCP impact the local or small-scale behavior of the traffic and how the...

Traffic measurement is a critical component for the control and engineering of communication networks. We argue that traffic measurement should make it possible to obtain the spatial flow of traffic through the domain, i.e., the paths followed by packets between any ingress and egress point of the domain. Most resource allocation and capacity planning tasks can benefit from such information. Also, traffic measurements should be obtained without a routing model and without knowledge of network state. This allows the traffic measurement process to be resilient to network failures and state uncertainty. We propose a method that allows the direct inference of traffic flows through a domain by observing the trajectories of a subset of all packets traversing the network. The key advantages of the method are that (i) it does not rely on routing state, (ii) its implementation cost is small, and (iii) the measurement reporting traffic is modest and can be controlled precisely. The key idea of the method is to sample packets based on a hash function computed over the packet content. Using the same hash function will yield the same sample set of packets in the entire domain, and enables us to reconstruct packet trajectories. I.

Recent empirical studies [6] have shown that Internet topologies exhibit power laws of the form � for the following relationships: (P1) outdegree of node (domain or router) versus rank; (P2) number of nodes versus outdegree; (P3) number of node pairs within a neighborhood versus neighborhood size (in hops); and (P4) eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix versus rank. However, causes for the appearance of such power laws have not been convincingly given. In this paper, we examine four factors in the formation of Internet topologies. These factors are (F1) preferential connectivity of a new node to existing nodes; (F2) incremental growth of the network; (F3) distribution of nodes in space; and (F4) locality of edge connections. In synthetically generated network topologies, we study the relevance of each factor in causing the aforementioned power laws as well as other properties, namely

Accurate network bandwidth measurement is important to a variety of network applications. Unfortunately, accurate bandwidth measurement is difficult. We describe some current bandwidth measurement techniques: using throughput, pathchar [8], and Packet Pair [2]. We explain some of the problems with these techniques, including poor accuracy, poor scalability, lack of statistical robustness, poor agility in adapting to bandwidth changes, lack of flexibility in deployment, and inaccuracy when used on a variety of traffic types. Our solutions to these problems include using a packet window to adapt quickly to bandwidth changes, Receiver Only Packet Pair to combine accuracy and ease of deployment, and Potential Bandwidth Filtering to increase accuracy. Our techniques are are at least as accurate as previously used filtering algorithms, and in some situations, our techniques are more than 37% more accurate. I. INTRODUCTION A common complaint about the Internet is that it is slow. Some of this...

Despite its obvious success, robustness, and scalability, the Internet suffers from a number of end-to-end performance and availability problems. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the Internet's inefficiencies and then we argue that Internet behavior can be improved by spreading intelligent routers at key access and interchange points to actively manage traffic. Our Detour prototype aims to demonstrate practical benefits to end users, without penalizing non-Detour users, by aggregating traffic information across connections and using more efficient routes to improve Internet performance. 1 Introduction By any metric, the Internet has scaled remarkably; from 4 nodes in 1969 to an estimated 25 million hosts and 100 million users today. This reflects a sustained growth rate over three decades of roughly 80% per year, all while providing nearly continuous service. As a system, the Internet's growth has been matched only by the major infrastructure projects of the early 1900's: the ele...

World-Wide Web server over the course a year and a half. This paper presents a longitudinal look at various network path properties, as well as the implementation status of various protocol options and mechanisms. In particular, this paper considers how WorldWide Web clients utilize TCP connections to transfer web data; the deployment of various TCP and HTTP options; the range of round-trip times observed in the network; packet sizes used for WWW transfers; the implications of the measured advertised window sizes; and the impact of using larger initial congestion window sizes. These properties/mechanisms and their implications are explored. An additional goal of this paper is to provide information to help researchers better simulate and emulate realistic networks.