1.0 Initial Requirements
Since central monitoring does not scale effectively, a home
device is required. The device needs to be cheap, available worldwide
and amenable to complete software customisation. It should preferably
be a device that already exists in the home of the pilot audience
and, if added to the user's installation, it has to be transparent
to the rest of the home network.
The home device needs to work in conjunction with a subset of
the existing Test Traffic Measurement (TTM) infrastructure. The
system should not introduce significant processing load within
the TTM node software nor should it cause architectural software
changes. No new TTM nodes should be deployed as part of this effort,
unless specifically purchased by a pilot participant.
Anonymised time-stamped raw measurement data should be centrally
available for research.
User and provider privacy needs to be enforced. This means that
users can only see their own data and that providers have no access
to other providers' customer measurements. To mitigate service
providers' concerns with respect to competitive comparisons -
when and if such a need arises - public summary data should consist
of anonymous coarse-grained scoring similar to that used by Band-X
[1] for grading transit. It is desirable to
plan for such capability from the start.
Pilot deployment preference should be given to those service
providers that are willing to relocate, or newly locate a TTM
node within a densely populated customer access network.
2.0 Measurements
All measurements are between the home device and a designated
TTM node located within the user's service provider's access network.
The periodic measurements are: packet loss, delay and jitter.
Bandwidth measurement should only be available on demand because
of TTM node side load.
3.0 Non Measurements
This system does not and should not measure inter-domain performance.
The test end points comprise the consumer's home and one or more
TTM nodes placed within that consumer's service provider network,
at a location determined by the service provider. No measurements
will be taken between home devices nor to TTM nodes not expressly
assigned by the service provider.
4.0 Approach
Few devices meet the above requirements. The LinkSys WRTG54 [2]
however, makes for an easy choice. It is a wireless router/bridge,
made by Cisco, with a market price of under US$50. Its software
is open [3], runs Linux and has an extensible
soft probe and network management package [4]
already running on it.
The choice of the LinkSys device should not be construed as a
decision to use it for production deployment, if and when approved.
5.0 Deliverables
As a first step, a prototype of the system will be built, in
order to demonstrate the acceptance and usefulness of such a system.
All measurements shall conform to relevant IETF IPPM specifications,
where applicable. The study needs to address the following issues:
The hardware platform for these measurements is an ADSL router/access
point. Measurement software will be added to this platform, however,
the device should continue to act as an ADSL router. Before the
full system is designed, a prototype will be built to show that
this is possible. The prototype will also be used to get an idea
of the deployment issues. The proposed hardware platform is a
cheap device that will typically be run in a home environment,
with large variations in room temperature. We will check if the
hardware is stable enough platform for these kind of measurements.
The RIPE NCC shall provide a calibration methodology for qualifying
and selecting the measurement platform.
Optional specification and software deliverables shall comprise:
Stretch objectives are ICMP monitor,
IPv6 measurement strategy, DNS primary and secondary server test
and POP3/IMAP turn-around test. Future possible measurements are
passive tests for VoIP, video and application level performance.
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