Unicast probing techniques for estimation of shared loss rate

Abstract

AbstractThe paper introduces two new unicast active end‐to‐end measurement techniques, called the single–double unicast probing (SDUP) and the delay‐based unicast probing (DUP), to estimate the rate of losses which occurs on the shared network path of two flows. A comprehensive performance evaluation and a comparison between these two techniques and an existing one having the same objective, the striped unicast probing (SUP) (Proceedings of the INFOCOM 2001—The IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, No. 2, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A., 2001; 915–923), were carried out. We demonstrate that our proposed SDUP technique provides even better estimation accuracy compared to that of the SUP while it requires only one piece of measurement equipment at only one receiver instead of deploying units to both receivers. Furthermore, with only one sender and receiver pair we can measure not only one shared path, but any partial path that begins at the sender and is located on the sender–receiver path. We also show that while the DUP have the same accuracy as the SUP in the case of Drop‐Tail buffer management, the DUP is capable of measuring loss rates of RED buffers, which the other techniques do not work with. The SDUP and the DUP are less intrusive and cause less bursty traffic compared to the SUP. Finally, the adaptation of these techniques into passive measurements is also considered. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.