Model-based identification of dominant congested links
Wei Wei, Bing Wang, Don Towsley, Jim Kurose · 2003
In this paper, we propose a model-based approach that uses periodic end-end probes to identify whether a "dominant congested link" exists along an end-end path. Informally, a dominant congested link refers to a link that incurs the most losses and significant queuing delays along the path. We begin by providing a formal yet intuitive definition of dominant congested link and present two simple hypothesis tests to identify whether such a link exists. We then present and examine several novel model-based approaches for identifying a dominant congested link that are based on interpreting probe loss as an unobserved (virtual) delay. We develop parameter inference algorithms for Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Markov model with a hidden dimension to infer this virtual delay. Our validation using ns simulation and live Internet experiments demonstrate that this approach can correctly identify a dominant congested link with only a small amount of probe data. We further estimate the maximum queuing delay of the dominant congested link, once we identify that a dominant congested link exists.