Increasing the observability of Internet behavior
Tom Chen · Communications of the ACM · 2001
In this article, improving the observability of Internet behavior as a first step toward the ultimate goal of more accurate monitoring is discussed. Historically, the Internet has been difficult to monitor and manage due to its heterogeneity, geographic size and distributed administration. In addition, the Internet protocol was purposely designed with lowest common denominator requirements from each network, including minimal protocol functions, to facilitate performance measurements. It is apparent that the Internet cannot continue its successful growth without overcoming the limitations of current network monitoring techniques. Improvements are needed in the Internet infrastructure and protocols to facilitate performance and traffic monitoring. Given the necessity for cooperation to make the Internet work, more agreements are needed between service providers for a common measurement infrastructure, protocols and metrics. An equally important problem is development of advanced tools to process the raw data and provide new insights and guidelines for application design. Tools and algorithms are needed to make use of raw data to optimize resource management and traffic control.