PingER: Research Opportunities and Trends

R. Les Cottrell, SLAC

University of Malaya

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PingER project and publications etc.

Originally:

• Research project funded from 1995-2000 by DoE

• Aimed at High Energy Physics collaborations

Journal publications e.g.: IEEE Comm paper 2000

Popular magazine articles e.g.: IEEE Spectrum 2013

Yearly reports going back to1998

Papers at conferences e.g.: Passive & Active Measurements

Numerous presentations in over 20 countries

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Potential Projectshttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Future+Projects

Two layers:

1. Development of the infrastructure

2. Research using the PingER data and infrastructure

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1: Development of PingER

Set up, extend and maintain Malaysian end-to-end active performance

monitoring mesh

Improve management tools:

• Installation make easier, e.g. Ubuntu distribution with PingER installed• detecting/resolving problems

- Hosts not responding, notifying contact- Replacing non-working hosts

New vizualization/analysis/mining

• Publication of PingER data vis Open Linked Data (OLD) access- Could be part of a research project- Started (1.5. months in) by a Brazilian student at SLAC for 3 months

• Improved Google map access

Improve analysis tools:

• Extend for IPv6 (Measurements have been IPv6 capable since 2002)

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2: Research Opportunities using the PingER data

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Case studies

Case study of Malaysian internet performance• How does Malaysia compare to the rest of the

world, to other S.E. Asian nations, is it getting better etc.

• Where are there problems? • Un-reliable and causes • Noisy (jitter & loss)• Very indirect connections• Work with site contacts, MYREN or ISPs to

notify them of problems

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Case study - 2

What applications will work

• Expected data transfer rates- Ok for email, web surfing, streaming

video, online gaming, web hosting, online

TV, downloading movies

• Where will VoIP work well?• Would Haptic surgery work?

- Based on RTT, loss and jitter?

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Publication of analyzed PingER data in Open Link data formathttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/PingER+Linked+Open+Data

• Have made a start • Enables correlation of PingER data and mashups

- Versus economic indicators, happiness, corruption…- Is there a correlation between Network performance and the

Faculty/student ratio, do private universities have better

connectivity than public, etc.?

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Anomaly detectionhttp://slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacpubs/13250/slac-pub-13399.pdf

Looking at time series, detect anomalous changes in

performance

Multiple metrics, choice of data set

Statistical analysis of time periods, training period:

• plateau algorithm, Holt-Winters (filtering out seasonal

effects), Kalman filters, Klomogorov-Smirnov …

• Compare & contrast methods

Tie into traceroutes

Correlate monitor/remote pairs to find shared links with

problems

• E.g. Principal Component Analysis

Measure success by high true positives (i.e. low false positives,

low false negatives), speed of detection …

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Problem reporting

Reporting to identified appropriate contact

Some hysteresis so do not report one event multiple times

Also report when fixed.

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IPv6

Extend PingER data gathering, archiving, analysis to

support IPv6

Use PingER to make IPv6 measurements of IPv6 hosts

Compare to IPv4 hosts at similar locations

Make PingER IPv6 measurements with QoS to compare

withput QoS measurements

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GeoLocation of specified Internet hosthttp://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tulip/

Location of nodes (especially routers) using trilateration

• Routers usually report they are located at the corporate HQ and not

their physical location

Use PingER monitors (plus other ping servers such as PlanetLab &

perfSONAR) as landmarks to:

Ping target with unknown location to get minimum RTT

Knowing speed of light in fibre get an estimate of minimum distance

Correct for estimated indirectivity to get improved distance estimate

• Research problem estimating indirectivity

Using 2 distances get doughnut of distance of target from landmark

• Constrained

Using smallest doughnuts trilaterate to find location of target

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Geo Location challenges

Make it fast enough to use in realtime from a web form

• Multi-step

• Using a few well chosen landmarks first find region target

is in,• Use all the landmarks in that region to get distance

estimates and trilaterate

How to estimate directivity correction factor?

• By region …

Security concerns (DDOS)?

Target may block pings

• Try TCP ping …

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Geolocation: Landmarks

Finding landmarks that are working well

• Ongoing problem needs automating, disable non

responding landmarks, recover now working disabled

landmarks

Finding landmarks in all regions of interest

Where does it work?

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Geo Location

When does it fail & why

Comparison to other methods such as databases

• Whois, GeoIPtools/MaxMind etc.

How does performance relate to number of landmarks?

What is it useful for:

• Targeted marketing

• Valuable for routers and hence visual traceroutes

• Find proxies

• Which server to use (e.g. HotMail)

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Geolocation visualization

Using Google maps

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Going forward

One year Internships at SLAC

Proposals to apply for grants

Coordination between UM, UMT, UNIMAS, SLAC. NUST