Subject: Re: [IMRG] The case for an Internet Measurement Protocol

From: Tony McGregor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:14:04 +1300

Hi 

Clearly, I also support the idea of an IP measurement protocol that
can collect path information during a single packet exchange.  

Matthew Luckie and I have been working on IPMP for a few years and we
are totally convinced that, although conceptually simple, the
existence of such a protocol would have a huge positive impact on
active measurement.  The obvious advantages are in the ability to
gather correct path and latency measurements for problem diagnosis.
Today's tools are only rough approximations to what is needed.  But,
there are many other areas where such a protocol would also make a
large difference.  Bandwidth estimation is one such area.  See, for example:

 "Segmentation of Internet Paths for Capacity Estimation"
 http://voodoo.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~mjl12/luckie2003isma.pdf

There are other suggestions in:

 "Towards Improving Packet Probing Techniques" ACM SIGCOMM IMW2001
  http://www.wand.net.nz/pubs/5/pdf/imw2001-probing.pdf 

and 

 "IPMP: IP Measurement Protocol" PAM2002
 http://www.labs.agilent.com/pam2002/proceedings/IPMP_IP_Measurement_Protocol.pdf

As Jon mentioned, I wrote the draft that draft-bennett-ippm-ipmp-01.txt is 
based on.  With respect to a straw man proposal (or source material
for a new proposal) I'd suggest that one of our more recent drafts
would be a better starting point.  The current draft is
draft-mcgregor-ipmp-02.txt but we will shortly be submitting (once the
current IETF meting is over) draft-mcgregor-ipmp-03.txt.  It's
currently at:
   http://voodoo.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~mjl12/draft-mcgregor-ipmp-03.txt

In support of this draft and the discussion generally, we have done
significant practical work.  There are software router implementations
(FreeBSD and Linux) of IPMP.  It is deployed in the AMP active
measurement project (http://watt.nlanr.net/) (measurement nodes only)
and also in the CRCnet rural wireless network (http://crc.net.nz/).  We
have also done laboratory experiments using the protocol.
 
The draft was discussed briefly by Matthew Luckie at the tsvwg meeting
this week.  The slides are at:
  http://mave.nlanr.net/~mjl/draft-mcgregor-ipmp-reqs-00.pdf. 
It was agreed that a requirements document would be useful
and we are soliciting input into the draft requirements document we are
writing.

I'm personally uncomfortable with some aspects of Jon's draft.
However, the key issue here, IMHO, is not really the differences
between the different proposals.  It is gaining the momentum to put a
protocol that collects path information onto the standards track.
What we need is a core group of people who're prepared to push for the
discussion to happen.  The detailed technical arguments can come
later, if we can get a working group to accept the protocol as a good
thing.

I'd love to have a list of people who're interested in discussing
this, or even just saying "Yes, I think the discussion is a good
idea". 

Tony

PS The implementation is published.  You can get it at:
       http://voodoo.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~mjl12/ipmp-src-0.9.2.tar.gz

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From: jon b <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:44:15 -0800 (PST)

Tony,

> would be a better starting point. 

I referenced your original draft because I was trying to make it easy
for people to see which portions of my draft were originaly drawn from
your draft. So as to properly attribute to you the work you had done.

Of course people should feel free to look at your latest drafts as
well.

> protocol that collects path information onto the standards track.

I fully agree. 

This is why as I mentioned in my earler message that we should stick to
discussing what should go into the protocol in general rather than
picking on details until such time as the details become more concrete.

jon