Skip to main content

TCP and ICMP in Network Measurement: An Experimental Evaluation

  • Conference paper
Parallel and Distributed Processing and Applications (ISPA 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3758))

  • 848 Accesses

Abstract

Both TCP and ICMP are applied in network measurement, while investigating differences between the measured results of them is important but has been less addressed. To compare the differences between TCP and ICMP when they are used in measuring host connectivity, RTT, and packet loss rate, we designed two groups of comparison programs, after careful evaluating of the program parameters, we executed a lot of experiments on the Internet. The experimental results shows, there are significant differences between the host connectivity measured using TCP or ICMP; in general, the accuracy of TCP is 20%-30% higher than that of ICMP. The case of RTT and packet loss rate is complicated, which are related to path loads and destination host loads. While commonly, the RTT and packet loss rate measured using TCP or ICMP are very close. We also give some advices on protocol selection for conducting accurate network measurements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Padmanabhan, V., Mogul, J.: Improving HTTP latency. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28(12), 25–35 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Floyd, S., Handley, M., Padhye, J.: Equation-based congestion control for unicast applications. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2000 (September 2000)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Breslau, L., Cao, P., Fan, L.: Web caching and Zipf-like distributions: Evidence and implications. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1999 (March 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mathi, J.: Framework for IP Performance metrics. RFC 2330

    Google Scholar 

  5. Savage, S.: Sting: A tool for measuring one-way packet loss. In: Proceedings of INFOCOM 2000 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Matthews, W., Cottrel, L.: The PingER project: Active Internet performance monitoring for the HENP community. IEEE Communications 38(5), 130–136 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Horneffer, M.: Assessing Internet Performance Metrics Using Large-Scale TCP-syn Based Measurements. In: Proceedings of Passive & Active Measurement Workshop, PAM 2000 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Mathis, M.: The Macroscopic Behavior of the TCP Congestion Avoidance Algorithm. Computer Communication Review 27(3), 44–57 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Pasztor, A., Veitch, D.: A precision infrastructure for active probing. In: Proceedings of Passive & Active Measurement Workshop, PAM 2001 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Barford, Paul, Sommers: Comparing Probe- and Router-based Methods for Measuring Packet Loss. In: IEEE Internet Computing - Special issue on Measuring the Internet (September/October 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kalidindi, S., Zekauskas, M., Uijterwaal, H.: Comparing two Implementations of the IETF IPPM One-way Delay and Loss Metrics. In: Proceedings of Passive & Active Measurement Workshop, PAM 2000 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Jiang, H., Dovrolis, C.: Passive Estimation of TCP Round-Trip Times. Computer Communication Review 32(3), 67–79 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Wang, Z., Zeitoun, A., Jamin, S.: Challenges and Lessons Learned in Measuring Path RTT for Proximity-based Applications. In: Proceedings of Passive & Active Measurement Workshop, PAM 2003 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Wang, S.Y.: On comparing the real and probed packet drop rates of a bottleneck router: the TCP traffic case. Computer Communications 26(6), 591–602 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. http://www.alexa.com/

  16. Zhang, Y., Duffield, N., Paxson, V., Shenker, S.: On the Constancy of Internet Path Properties. In: Proceedings of Internet Measurement Workshop (IMW 2001) (November 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Krishnamurthy, B., Wang, J.: On Network-Aware Clustering of Web Clients. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2000, August 2000, pp. 97–110 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Acharya, A., Saltz, J.: A study of internet round-trip delay. Univ of Maryland, Tech Rep. CS-TR-3736 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Allman, M., Paxson, V.: On Estimating End-to-End Network Path Properties. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 1999, pp. 263–274 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Li, W., Zhang, D., Xie, G., Yang, J. (2005). TCP and ICMP in Network Measurement: An Experimental Evaluation. In: Pan, Y., Chen, D., Guo, M., Cao, J., Dongarra, J. (eds) Parallel and Distributed Processing and Applications. ISPA 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3758. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11576235_87

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11576235_87

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-29769-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32100-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics