ARPANET performance tuning techniques
James G. Herman · ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review · 1982
As part of its operation and maintenance of the ARPANET for the past twelve years, BBN has been asked to investigate a number of cases of degradation in network performance. This presentation discusses the practical methods and tools used to uncover and correct the causes of these service problems. A basic iterative method of hypothesis generation, experimental data gathering, and analysis is described. Emphasis is placed on the need for experienced network analysts to direct the performance investigation and for the availability of network programmers to provide special purpose modifications to the network node software in order to probe the causes of the traffic patterns under observation. Many typical sources of performance problems are described, a detailed list of the tools used by the analyst are given, and a list of basic techniques provided. Throughout the presentation specific examples from actual ARPANET performance studies are used to illustrate the points made.