4,486 research outputs found
Active Topology Inference using Network Coding
Our goal is to infer the topology of a network when (i) we can send probes
between sources and receivers at the edge of the network and (ii) intermediate
nodes can perform simple network coding operations, i.e., additions. Our key
intuition is that network coding introduces topology-dependent correlation in
the observations at the receivers, which can be exploited to infer the
topology. For undirected tree topologies, we design hierarchical clustering
algorithms, building on our prior work. For directed acyclic graphs (DAGs),
first we decompose the topology into a number of two-source, two-receiver
(2-by-2) subnetwork components and then we merge these components to
reconstruct the topology. Our approach for DAGs builds on prior work on
tomography, and improves upon it by employing network coding to accurately
distinguish among all different 2-by-2 components. We evaluate our algorithms
through simulation of a number of realistic topologies and compare them to
active tomographic techniques without network coding. We also make connections
between our approach and alternatives, including passive inference, traceroute,
and packet marking
A Network Coding Approach to Loss Tomography
Network tomography aims at inferring internal network characteristics based
on measurements at the edge of the network. In loss tomography, in particular,
the characteristic of interest is the loss rate of individual links and
multicast and/or unicast end-to-end probes are typically used. Independently,
recent advances in network coding have shown that there are advantages from
allowing intermediate nodes to process and combine, in addition to just
forward, packets. In this paper, we study the problem of loss tomography in
networks with network coding capabilities. We design a framework for estimating
link loss rates, which leverages network coding capabilities, and we show that
it improves several aspects of tomography including the identifiability of
links, the trade-off between estimation accuracy and bandwidth efficiency, and
the complexity of probe path selection. We discuss the cases of inferring link
loss rates in a tree topology and in a general topology. In the latter case,
the benefits of our approach are even more pronounced compared to standard
techniques, but we also face novel challenges, such as dealing with cycles and
multiple paths between sources and receivers. Overall, this work makes the
connection between active network tomography and network coding
Active Learning of Multiple Source Multiple Destination Topologies
We consider the problem of inferring the topology of a network with
sources and receivers (hereafter referred to as an -by- network), by
sending probes between the sources and receivers. Prior work has shown that
this problem can be decomposed into two parts: first, infer smaller subnetwork
components (i.e., -by-'s or -by-'s) and then merge these components
to identify the -by- topology. In this paper, we focus on the second
part, which had previously received less attention in the literature. In
particular, we assume that a -by- topology is given and that all
-by- components can be queried and learned using end-to-end probes. The
problem is which -by-'s to query and how to merge them with the given
-by-, so as to exactly identify the -by- topology, and optimize a
number of performance metrics, including the number of queries (which directly
translates into measurement bandwidth), time complexity, and memory usage. We
provide a lower bound, , on the number of
-by-'s required by any active learning algorithm and propose two greedy
algorithms. The first algorithm follows the framework of multiple hypothesis
testing, in particular Generalized Binary Search (GBS), since our problem is
one of active learning, from -by- queries. The second algorithm is called
the Receiver Elimination Algorithm (REA) and follows a bottom-up approach: at
every step, it selects two receivers, queries the corresponding -by-, and
merges it with the given -by-; it requires exactly steps, which is
much less than all possible -by-'s. Simulation results
over synthetic and realistic topologies demonstrate that both algorithms
correctly identify the -by- topology and are near-optimal, but REA is
more efficient in practice
Large scale probabilistic available bandwidth estimation
The common utilization-based definition of available bandwidth and many of
the existing tools to estimate it suffer from several important weaknesses: i)
most tools report a point estimate of average available bandwidth over a
measurement interval and do not provide a confidence interval; ii) the commonly
adopted models used to relate the available bandwidth metric to the measured
data are invalid in almost all practical scenarios; iii) existing tools do not
scale well and are not suited to the task of multi-path estimation in
large-scale networks; iv) almost all tools use ad-hoc techniques to address
measurement noise; and v) tools do not provide enough flexibility in terms of
accuracy, overhead, latency and reliability to adapt to the requirements of
various applications. In this paper we propose a new definition for available
bandwidth and a novel framework that addresses these issues. We define
probabilistic available bandwidth (PAB) as the largest input rate at which we
can send a traffic flow along a path while achieving, with specified
probability, an output rate that is almost as large as the input rate. PAB is
expressed directly in terms of the measurable output rate and includes
adjustable parameters that allow the user to adapt to different application
requirements. Our probabilistic framework to estimate network-wide
probabilistic available bandwidth is based on packet trains, Bayesian
inference, factor graphs and active sampling. We deploy our tool on the
PlanetLab network and our results show that we can obtain accurate estimates
with a much smaller measurement overhead compared to existing approaches.Comment: Submitted to Computer Network
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