NetForecast: A Delay Prediction Scheme for Provider Controlled Networks

Over the last years, the Internet has evolved towards becoming the dominant platform for deploying real time and multimedia services. This evolution has had as a consequence that the selection of an appropriate server, proxy or super node with reference to some specific QoS parameter becomes of paramount importance. We consider in our paper the specific case of delay estimation. An investigation of existing approaches for the estimation and prediction of network delay is provided. Based on that, we further suggest NetForecast as a way to overcome limitations of existing prediction methods. NetForecast is an algorithm for delay prediction in provider controlled networks. The algorithm is based on a combination of landmark-based distance estimation, clustering and a triangulation principle. The paper reports on preliminary performance of NetForecast, as provided by a simulation study. Our results show the feasibility of the suggested method.