ICFA/SCIC Monitoring WG

1. ICFA/SCIC Monitoring WG Les Cottrell – SLAC representing the ICFA/SCIC Monitoring WG Prepared for the ICFA-SCIC, KEK, Dec 12, 2002 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk/icfa-dec02/icfa-dec02.ppt Partially funded by DOE/MICS Field Work Proposal on Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring (IEPM), also supported by IUPAP

2. Administrivia • ICFA-SCIC-MON web page http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/scic-netmon/ & • Email list icfa-scic-mon@slac.stanford.edu • Report: http://www.slac.stanford/xorg/icfa/ • Membership:

3. Outline 1/2 • 12 page report • Goal: Obtain as uniform picture as possible of the present performance of the connectivity used by the ICFA community • Follow on to May 1998 report from ICFA/NTF • Measurements & results for: • PingER low intrusion, wide coverage, long term. Excellent overview of performance for general worldwide Internet usage • IEPM-BW higher intrusion, high performance links such as major HENP, Grid and network research sites. Aimed at understanding achievable performance for TCP/IP and applications

4. Outline 2/2 • Coverage & definitions of 11 major regions • How to interpret impact of loss & RTT on quality of common applications: VOIP, video, telnet … • PingER • Loss • RTTs • Throughput ~ MSS/(RTT*sqrt(loss)) • IEPM-bw high performance links • Summary • Recommendations

5. History – Loss & RTT Loss more critical than RTT Losses cause timeouts of typically seconds 40-50% improve/yr Best networks below 0.1% Russia, SE Europe, China several years behind • N. America & Europe improving 10-20% per year • Japan & Russia slower • S.E. Europe & China faster

6. History - Throughput quality improvements from US 80% annual improvement ~ factor 10/4yr TCPBW < MSS/(RTT*sqrt(loss)) (1) ~Factor 100 improvement in 8 years Problems with hi-perf links • Most regions improving at 60-80% / year (1) Macroscopic Behavior of the TCP Congestion Avoidance Algorithm, Matthis, Semke, Mahdavi, Ott, Computer Communication Review 27(3), July 1997

7. Loss by region Bad regions: Caucasus, S. Asia (India), Africa Poor: S.E. Europe

8. High performance (IEPM-BW) • PingER NG, PingER on steroids … • 9 monitoring sites, • 50 monitored hosts in 9 countries (CA, CH, CZ, FR, IT, JP, NL, UK, US). • Off the shelf hdw, OS, TCP stack, MTUs, NICS • More focused on particular paths • Can achieve hundreds of Mbits/s between major inter-continental sites • Requires “wizard” configuration of TCP, powerful host, GE interfaces, >= 622Mbits/s to site • Lot of work on new TCP stacks

9. eJDS (Electronic Journal Distribution Service) • Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) sponsored • ICTP Workshop on "Developing Country Access to Digital Publishing", Trieste, October, 2002, sponsored by ICTP, ICSU, IUPAP, UNESCO, TWAS & WIF (http://www.ictp.trieste.it/ejournals/meeting2002/) • Goal: bring together all interested parties to analyse, share experiences, promote ideas and discuss • innovative technological tools, • the digital divide, • licensing issues, • concrete strategic alternatives • To support scientists working in remote areas and having low-bandwidth, or expensive access to on-line database services and the Internet. • developed recommendations to provide guidance and make suggestions on how to support concrete and sustainable alternatives to help bridge the digital divide and thus facilitate, in particular, developing countries' access to on-line scientific publishing (see www.ictp.trieste.it/ejournals/meeting2002/Recommen_Trieste.pdf) • To devote resources to monitor in real time the connectivity of research and educational institutions in developing countries and to encourage (and devote resources to) the development of the connectivity. • Sent letter to site contacts in developing countries

10. eJDS • ICTP people sent letter on Dec 2, 2002 tocontacts in developing countries • plan to monitor by PingER universities and research institutions all over the Developing World following the recent "Recommendations of Trieste" to help bridge the Digital Divide. • Next day 6 responses (MD, IN (Hyderabad, Kerala), MX, GT, PH, IN) • Since 6 more (CN, UA, IN (Madras, Delhi), BR, ID) • Successfully monitoring 6 (GT, BR, MD, IN (Kerala), ID) • Others cannot access host, blocking pings, have emailed each one, and communicating with a couple

11. Summary - results • Internet A&R connectivity performance is improving • RTT 10-20%/yr, loss 40-50%/yr, throughput 80%/yr • Reduced use of satellites, mainly use for new hard to get to areas (e.g. S. Russian Republics, Africa) • China, S.E. Europe, Russia, Latin America rate of change keeps up but several years behind • Caucasus, Africa, India, S.E. Europe bad to poor packet loss • Improvements need constant investments to understand & improve

12. Recommendations • Continue to keep track of performance for HENP and science • Work with ICTP to extend to more countries, help understand and measure the digital divide {should we add this?} • Heads up: DoE funding runs out at end of FY 03.

13. Help • Looking for better hosts to monitor & contacts in: • Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan • Macedonia*, Turkey*, Yugoslavia • Columbia*, Venezuela*, Cuba, Mexico* • Pakistan • Africa (apart from Egypt, Uganda & South Africa, n.b. all 54 countries in Africa now have Internet access in capitals) • Note there are a few countries (about 5% of the world’s countries) that do not have full Internet connections and pay dearly by the byte. • A couple of years ago these included: Afghanistan, Western Sahara, Christmas Island, S. Georgia, Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Montserrat, N. Korea, Pitcairn, St Vincente & Grenadines