CRAWDAD tools/analyze/link/PBProbe

PBProbe - a link capacity estimation tool for network links.

PBProbe is a link capacity estimation tool that supports a wide range of links, including high speed links, asymmetric links, and wireless links. The tool is based on the CapProbe algorithm excepts that it uses a “packet bulk” to adapt the number of packets in each probing according to different network characteristics. As a result, it preserves the simplicity, speed, and accuracy of CapProbe, and compensates for the poor system timer granularity problem that may cause problems on high speed links. Compared to other capacity estimation techniques, PBProbe is ideal for real deployments that require online and timely capacity estimation, and it can facilitate various applications, such as peer-to-peer streaming and file sharing, overlay network structuring, pricing and QoS enhancements, as well as network monitoring.

Lastmodified :

2012-11-12

Dataname :

tools/analyze/link/PBProbe

File :

PBProbe_2.0.1.tar.gz

Releasedate :

2012-10-24

Equiversion :

2.0.1

Change :

the initial version.

References :

chen:pbprobe
Website

Website :

http://www.crawdad.org/tools/analyze/link/PBProbe

Keyword :

802.11
802.11a
802.11b
802.11g

License :

Copyright (c) 2012 Ling-Jyh Chen

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software, and if the Software or part of
it is implemented or applied in academia research and publication, the article
"Ling-Jyh Chen, Tony Sun, Bo-Chun Wang, M. Y. Sanadidi, and Mario Gerla.
PBProbe: A Capacity Estimation Tool for High Speed Networks. Computer
Communications Journal, Elsevier, volume 31, number 17, pp. 3883-3893, November,
2008." related to the Software should also be properly cited in the reference.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Support :

We will be happy to answer any questions via emails regarding this tool.

Build :

To build the tool:
- Unpack files: tar xvfz PBProbe-2.0.1.tar.gz
- Compile code: cd ./PBProbe-2.0.1 & make

Output :

Final: <Link Capacity (Mbps)> <Packet Loss> <Packet Recv> <Packet Loss Rate(%)> <Elapsed Time (seconds)>

Example: Final: 97.48257     0     20200     0.00     2.99025

Parameters :

All Options:

-s: run as sender, ex: '-s RECEIVER_IP'
-d: run as receiver, ex: '-d SENDER_IP'
-p: the size of packet (default: 1500), ex: '-p 1000' means using 1000 bytes as a packet
-c: the interval of probing traffic, ex: '-c 100' means constant interval 100 ms
-r: the rate to probe the link capacity, ex: '-r 1' means using 1 Mbps to probe
-k: the length of bulk (default: 10), ex: '-k 100' means a bulk contains 100 packets
-u: the utilization of link capacity (default: 0.01), ex: '-u 0.01' means using 1% of link capacity to probe
-n: the number of probing bulks (default: 10), ex: '-n 200' means using 200 bulks to probe
-v: show verbose log
-b: show debug info

Note:

1) You just can use one of '-c', '-r' and '-u' option at a time.

2) If you try to measure the high speed link such as 1 Gbps link,
you can use '-k 100' for more accurate.
The default length of bulk is 10.

Usage :

To estimate the link capacity between two nodes called Sender and Receiver, you
can follow the instructions below.

<At Sender> ./PBProbe –s <Receiver_IP>
<At Receiver> ./PBProbe –d <Sender_IP>

If your link is a high speed link which is higher than 1 Gbps, you can use
‘-k 100’ or even ‘-k 1000’ for more accuracy. The default k is 10. If your link
is a slow speed link, you can use ‘-r <rate>’ to limit the probing traffic.

If the packet size becomes larger than the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU), the
“big” packet will be segmented into several fragments before entering the
network. The fragments will then be reassembled as the original packet size at
the receiver. The latency caused by segmentation (at the sender) and reassembly
(at the receiver) expands the dispersion measurement and therefore results in
underestimation. You can use ‘-p <packet_size>’ to change the packet size
to probe the link.

After the estimation, PBProbe will return the link capacity, packet loss,
packets received, packet loss rate, and elapsed time. If you want to know the
detailed dispersion in the experiment, you can use ‘-v’ for more information.

Example :

There are examples of input and output on the tool website
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pbprobe/

Algorithm :

PBProbe estimates the link capacity by actively sending a number of probes
over the network and using the minimum delay sum filter to identify a “good”
sample. However, instead of employing a packet pair, PBProbe uses a packet bulk
of length k in each probing and measures the capacity of each direction
separately. Specifically, PBProbe is comprised of two phases. In the first
phase, it estimates the capacity of the forward link; and in the second, it
estimates the capacity of the backward link.

For more detail, you can refer to our article in Computer Communications
Journal.