Measurements for Networking: An Overview

Communications and computer networks are a ubiquitous presence in everyday life and, in several respects, can be considered on a par with the most important classic utilities, such as water and energy. Providing for seamless delivery of information in several forms (e.g., voice, video, data files, etc.) requires efficient support for an ever increasing variety of applications and services, while allowing for widely different and frequently changing requirements. Proper monitoring, performance assessment, maintenance, and troubleshooting of networks play a fundamental role in assuring the desired quality level of the offered service. Several performance- critical applications already exist, from financial transactions to streaming multimedia, from billing process to factory automation, which require some quality of service (QoS) quantities to be measured as accurately as possible. New measurement challenges are thus arising, and have to be faced by the instrumentation and measurement research community. As promoters of the new Technical Committee (TC-37) on Measurement and Networking of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society, the authors intend to trace a comprehensive overview of the current scientific research about network measurement and measurement for networking, in order to highlight potential developments.