NORDUNET PERFORMANCE WORKING GROUP


Chair(s):
	Bernhard Stockman <boss@sunet.se>

Mailing Lists:
     	General Discussion:  	netf-perf@nic.nordu.net
     	To Subscribe:  	  	netf-perf-request@nic.nordu.net


Description of Working Group:

    The NORDUNET Performance Working Group has as it main tasks to define and 
    recommend performace meaurement methods and tools to be used within the 
    NORDUnet network. The area of interest spans over a variety of measurements
    as network throughput, quality of services, availability and stability
    including the gathering, the storage and the presentation methods for
    these traffic data.
        
    As the area of network performance have evolved recently to be an 
    integrated part of the operations within a NOC such methods are currently 
    not well established not to mention standardized. There have been a 
    tendency to use whatever means being closest at hand to create some 
    knowledge of what is going on inside the network. Such methods have of 
    course been very ad hoc and certainly not been aimed at usability outside
    the NOC as such. 

    In pace with current evolution from research networks towards networks 
    for researchers (and others) there have been an increasing need for 
    production traffic operation tools. The possibility of performing traffic
    measurements falls very well into this category. 

    For these reasons the NORDUnet performance group will keep in close
    contact with other groups in the today newtorking world doing similar 
    efforts. Furthermore the performance group will actively work for 
    inclusion of performance measurement methods and tool into the NORDUnet 
    environment once such methods and tools are defined and agreed on as 
    general in the sense that they are recommended for use in a majority
    of the today networks.

Milestones:

    So far the group have met one time, at the NETF meeting in Gothenburg. 
    At that meeting some of the interesting meterics that could be 
    condisered for gathering within NORDUnet were discussed as well as
    the specification of general model for network statistics.

    Examples on metrics being discussed:

    o  Quality of Service metrics such as 
       - delays
       - availabilities

    o  Traffic load and patterns such as
       - Protocol dependant patterns
       - Direct protocol overhead (e.g. routing updates)
       - Indirect protocol overhead (e.g. DNS traffic)
       - Short time peak averages
       - Longer term load averages.

    A model for network statistics.

    During this meeting the some unique ideas regarding a model for network
    statistics were born. These ideas have been adopted by the IETF
    working group on Operational Statistics where they have been refined
    into methods for gathering, exchange and presentation of statistical
    data. The IETF WG aims at submitting these specifications as Internet 
    Drafts.

    Other types of measurements.

    There have been discussion around the possibility of using the NSFnet 
    NNstat tool within NORDUnet. With NNstat it is possible to produce 
    detailed statistics of the traffic such as per protocol traffic, per 
    application traffic and net-to-net traffic. One weakness in the NNstat 
    tool is lack of powerful tools for processing and presentation of 
    logged data. The specification and developpment of such tools could very 
    well be a task for this working group. Some efforts in that direction have
    already started at the NORDUnet NOC where currently NNstat is running 
    on the NORDUnet backbone.


    Future.

    There have been an increased awerness of the importance of commonly 
    defined operational methods and tools. A lot of work is now being put 
    into the subject of defining, develop and deploy such tools. The 
    possibility of having a minimal set of standardized methods making
    it possible for a NOC to provide basic network operation capabililities
    is very attractive. There is today a model for network managment based
    on the definition of the SNMP protocol and the Internet Management 
    Information Base which gives the necessary framework on which such 
    set of operational tools could be based.

    The NETF performance working group forsees the rapid developpment
    of a set of common SNMP based operational tools and will actively
    participate in these efforts when relevant to the objectives for
    this working group.