Centre closure

As part of a broader organisational restructure, data networking research at Swinburne University of Technology has moved from the Centre for Advanced Internet Architecture (CAIA) to the Internet For Things (I4T) Research Lab.

Although CAIA no longer exists, this website reflects CAIA's activities and outputs between March 2002 and February 2017, and is being maintained as a service to the broader data networking research community.

Inverted Capacity Extended Engineering Experiment (ICE3)

Traffic Analysis

The primary question being posed is "What would happen if the last-mile/core bandwidth capacity were inverted?". To begin to answer this question we first need a solid understanding of:
  • What traffic flows over existing networks?
  • What traffic will flow over future - high capacity - networks such as the NBN
  • How do different types of traffic interact with each other over the network?
  • How do network induced problems impact on the experience and performance perceived by the end user?
To this end, we plan to use a series of tools developed both in-house at CAIA, and externally, to gain a better understanding of what is happening in the network. It is also expected that these tools would be useful for others who are not only interested in the same outcomes, but also in observing the behaviours exhibited by the networks in an attempt to improve network management.

Who Generated That Traffic?

One of the big problems when analysing traffic at higher levels, in particular at the application layer or obtaining end-user relevant information, is in knowing what application generated which traffic. This process falls under the general concept of Traffic Classification which also forms a key part of the work in ICE3.

Inferring The Nature Of The Network

It is often not possible to have a complete picture of the state of the Internet as seen by a client, nor is it likely that a user will be able to analyse the performance of parts of the network operated by third parties. Instead we often have to infer the nature and capabilities of broadband links and other parts of the network.

It is possible to determine many aspects of the network by the measurement - and subsequent analysis - of traffic patterns generated and received at the network endpoints. This measurement can be performed at various levels using tools such as:

  • SIFTR to to log and track the dynamics of individual TCP sessions
  • NetSniff to analyse the application layer performance, whilst also exploring estimated RTT of individual network flows
  • SPP to estimate the RTT between two hosts if we have access to both endpoints
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Last Updated: Monday 29-Aug-2011 12:04:54 AEST | Maintained by: Jason But (jbut@swin.edu.au) | Authorised by: Grenville Armitage ( garmitage@swin.edu.au)