Scheme to Measure Packet Processing Time of a Remote Host through Estimation of End-Link Capacity

Abstract

As transmission speeds increase faster than processing speeds, the packet processing time (PPT) of a host is becoming more significant in the measurement of different network parameters in which packet processing by the host is involved. The PPT of a host is the time elapsed between the arrival of a packet at the data-link layer and the time the packet is processed at the application layer (RFCs 2679 and 2681). To measure the PPT of a host, stamping the times when these two events occur is needed. However, time stamping at the data-link layer may require placing a specialized packet-capture card and the host under test in the same local network. This makes it complex to measure the PPT of remote end hosts. In this paper, we propose a scheme to measure the PPT of an end host connected over a single-or multiple-hop path and without requiring time stamping at the data-link layer. The proposed scheme is based on measuring the capacity of the link connected to the host under test. The scheme was tested on an experimental testbed and in the Internet, over a U.S. inter-state path and an international path between Taiwan and the U.S. We show that the proposed scheme consistently measures PPT of a host.

Development of an Improved Intrusion Detection based Secured Robust Header Compression Technique

“…The delay experienced by packets of flow f1 over the link between nodes k and k + 1 is expressed as [23]  …”

Estimation of the packet processing time of hosts in the presence of interrupt coalescence

“…At dst, IC is the time interval over which a NIC buffers more than one packet at its input queue before sending an interrupt to the central processing unit (CPU) for time stamping them at the application layer [4,5]. The time stamping at the application layer is considered to as the packet processing function at end hosts [8].…”

“…As transmission rates increase, the contribution of PPT to OWD increases, and the error in the measurement of OWD in high-speed networks can be large if PPTs are neglected [8,9]. Therefore, PPT and IC must be considered in accurate OWD measurements.…”

“…Therefore, PPT and IC must be considered in accurate OWD measurements. Accurate OWDs are required for precision-timing applications, e.g., IP geolocation [9] and financial trading [8,9].…”

“…This scheme instruments the data-link layer of the host under test to time stamp the received ICMP echo packets. Another scheme measures PPT of a remote host in a multiplehop scenario from link-capacity estimation using pairs of UDP packets, called compound probes [10], without any instrumentation at the host [8]. The existing schemes for PPT measurement do not consider the effect of (non-negligible) IC when it is present.…”