Tools and Practices for Measurement-based Network Performance Evaluation

As networks and applications running on them become more complex, there is a need for an efficient framework supporting experimental performance evaluation based on real measurements. Towards this end, this paper presents: a) an advanced architecture for a traffic generation tool capable of producing complex traffic profiles, b) the architecture of a traffic analysis tool, and c) methods that allow for efficient monitoring and measurements of delay and loss-oriented metrics in packet networks. The effectiveness of these tools and the applicability of the measurement methodology are illustrated through experiments that evaluate the performance of vertical handovers between GPRS and WLAN networks.