Towards a Standardized Terminology for Network Performance

The integration of the products of diverse fields, including the human component, into complex systems has created major difficulties in the development of efficient mechanisms for analyzing system performance. One of the problems can be traced to the variety of terminologies used in describing performance across different fields. A designer or user is faced with vague terms that may be complementary, synonymous, or some combination thereof. There is a need to develop a common understanding of the meaning of widely used terms without reference to a specific discipline. The work described in this paper aims to develop a framework that helps identify a set of performance indicators for complex systems, such as information infrastructures. The objective is not to propose yet another concept, but rather to identify from the existing concepts the proper definitions, attributes, intersections, and evaluation measures. Dependability, fault-tolerance, reliability/availability, security, and survivability are used as representative examples for describing the proposed framework. This framework could eventually help furnish the basis towards adoption of standard terminology.