Self-Study Plan

Metrics

The self-study plan will observe the following metrics:

1. Number of packet drops at the hop previous to a congested router.
2. Network latency between clients transmitting packets across the network.
3. Network jitter of ping packets transmitted across the network, where network jitter is defined as variability in packet latency.
4. Time to upload a file to a server (rudimentary throughput calculation).

Environments

The metrics defined above will be recorded in three environments: baseline, traditional, and software-defined. Baseline and traditional environments will use the topology shown in the Traditional Network section of the Test Plan page and the software-defined environment will use the topology shown in the Software Defined Network section of the Test Plan page. The base case will consist of the described topology without any router running a Neighborhood Watch Daemon and both the traditional and software-defined environments will use their respective Neighborhood Watch Daemon implementations.

Scenarios

The following scenarios will be run in each environment and the metrics described above will be recorded:

1. Ping Traffic - No Congestion: In this scenario, pings will be sent between two clients with no other traffic being generated in the network. After the pings are complete the output of the ping command will return statistics about the latency and packet drops.
2. Ping Traffic - Congestion: This is the same as scenario 1, except in the background IPERF will be run between two routers on the path of the ping causing congestion at the ingress queue of a target router. In addition to the ping statistics, the number of packets dropped on the egress device of the upstream router of the congested link and the number of packets dropped on the ingress device of the downstream router of the congested link will be recorded.
3. File Upload - No Congestion: In this scenario, a host will upload a 20 MB file across the network with no other traffic being generated. Wireshark will run in the background on the client capturing traffic. This traffic will then be used to generate a Round Trip Time graph in wireshark. In addition, the time taken to upload the file to the server. Similarly to scenario 2, there will be a link with a reduced speed much lower than that of the traffic being sent across it. The egress device on the upstream router and the ingress device of the downstream router to this link will be monitored for their packet drops during the test.
4. File Upload - Congestion: This scenario is exactly the same as scenario 3 above, except IPERF will be running across the throttled link to cause more congestion. Similar to above, Wireshark will run in the background on the client capturing traffic. This traffic will then be used to generate a Round Trip Time graph in wireshark. In addition, the time taken to upload the file to the server. Similarly to scenario 2, there will be a link with a reduced speed much lower than that of the traffic being sent across it. The egress device on the upstream router and the ingress device of the downstream router to this link will be monitored for their packet drops during the test.