SNMP-driven active measurements in DiffServ networks

Active network monitoring techniques have been traditionally used in network management frameworks for OAM operations. They can also provide vital end-to-end network status information which can be exploited for application optimization (Network-Aware Applications). The paper proposes a novel, standards-compliant management framework for conducting active measurements on DiffServ networks, solely based on SNMP as control protocol. A specialized SNMP agent (SNMP for Active Measurements - SAM) is introduced for this purpose, accompanied with a custom MIB, which utilizes the standardized OWAMP (One-Way Active Measurement Protocol) for establishing active measurement sessions. A proof-of-concept implementation deployed on a laboratory testbed shows that the proposed framework exhibits satisfactory accuracy and scalability, while at the same time being compatible with off-the-shelf SNMP-based network managers. The SAM framework has been released as open-source for Linux-based routers.