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Wireless Measurement and Analysis on

HPWREN
Todd Hansen, Pavana Yalamanchili, Hans-Werner Braun

Abstract— As networks grow faster everyday, net-


work measurement and analysis becomes more im-
portant. This paper gives a brief description of the
High Performance Wireless Research and Education
Network (HPWREN) Measurement and Analysis In-
frastructure. We then discuss three case studies in
which measurements provided a key component in
determining specific problems related to radio fre-
quency filters, weather conditions, and interference.
Fig. 1. Initial traffic from pala indian reservation

Keywords— wireless networks, measurement, anal-


ysis, performance, HPWREN activities which are conducted in close collabora-
tion with the National Laboratory for Applied Network
Research (NLANR)/ Measurement and Operations
I. I NTRODUCTION
Analysis Team (MOAT) [3], [5]. We then describe a
Advances in network technology have made the few case studies of some network problems which
world a smaller place. Messages can be delivered in- were resolved using our Measurement and Analysis
stantly across the global Internet, enhancing commu- Infrastructure.
nication and potentially improving productivity. Con-
nectivity has emerged as the single most important II. M EASUREMENT AND A NALYSIS
ingredient in the information technology revolution. I NFRASTRUCTURE
We are pushing the envelope with regard to the When the HPWREN project was developed we
speed at which information can be delivered via cop- were given the ability to instrument a network that
per, fiber and air. Major breakthroughs have been was completely under our control. We benefit from
attained in the quest for bigger, better, and more effi- this in a number of ways. For example, we use equip-
cient solutions for connectivity. ment to monitor network performance, to diagnose
Measuring the parameters of various network de- problems, to measure network activities in a way only
vices and conducting performance tests allows us to network operators can, and finally, to study the im-
study these connectivity characteristics. Measure- pact of network measurements on the network itself.
ment results are used to study and assess if the quest In short, it is an environment we can manipulate in
for a better and more efficient connection is being order to conduct various measurement and analysis
met. Monitoring the performance of a network helps activities.
us understand the reliability of the systems. Mea- In order to utilize the network for these measure-
surement and analysis help us plan for future instal- ments and to provide these measurements to the
lations and in optimizing existing ones. network architects we developed the HPWREN Mea-
In this paper, we first describe the High Perfor- surement and Analysis Infrastructure. This infrastruc-
mance Wireless Research and Education Network’s ture is still under development as we try to develop
(HPWREN) [1] current measurement and analysis new measurements that will yield useful results. Cur-
Todd Hansen is with the NLANR/MOAT, University of California, rently this entails a group of machines (see Figure 2)
San Diego, San Diego Supercomputer Center, 9500 Gilman Dr., La to do measurements and a repository [2] on which
Jolla, CA 92093-0505. E-mail: tshansen@nlanr.net we conduct analysis and make our results available
Pavana Yalamanchili is with the HPWREN project, E-mail: pa-
to the public. Since we control the network, we are
vana@hpwren.ucsd.edu
Hans-Werner Braun is the principal investigator of HPWREN and able to adjust the measurements we are making on
NLANR/MOAT. this infrastructure quickly to meet various needs that
Fig. 2. Map of locations with dedicated measurement computers

arise. pact on the network. However, they are still important


One of the most important aspects of the HP- in determining the maximum performance an end-
WREN Measurement and Analysis Infrastructure is user can expect to get and they are even more im-
the measurements we are conducting. The measure- portant in determining when performance has been
ments provide us with the raw data we need to de- degraded by a change in network characteristics.
termine cause and effect on the network. They also For these reasons we run a limited number of ac-
allow us to gauge many other factors, for example, tive measurement tests on the network. We conduct
we were able to see a graph of some of the first net- three types of active measurements. The most sig-
work traffic originating from the Pala Indian Reserva- nificant of these measurements is the one conducted
tion (see Figure 1). by the NLANR/MOAT Active Measurement Project
The measurements we conduct can be broken (AMP) [4], [5] project. We run an HPWREN AMP
down into five basic categories: Active Measure- mesh that measures round trip time (RTT) and route
ments, Passive Measurements, Management Infor- data between the many points within our network.
mation Base (MIB) Data, Network Status and Other We have machines at most of our end nodes and
Measurements. at each of our major backbone nodes. in order to
determine the network’s connectivity relative to the
A. Active Measurements NLANR AMP/MOAT sites, we also measure RTT and
Active measurements are measurements which route data from each of those sites to NLANR’s Na-
test the performance a network is capable of provid- tional Center for Atmospheric Research and Harvard
ing. As such, these measurements have a distinct im- AMP monitors. By segregating the HPWREN AMP
mesh from the NLANR AMP mesh we are able to
45Mbps Radio
reduce the amount of traffic and still get useful mea-
surements about the performance of our network to
compare with others. 3600 series
router To Northpeak
The second set of active measurements we run
are throughput measurements (eight times a day on 2900 switch
\w SPAN port
each link). In order to reduce the impact of through-
put measurements we do not run measurements over
Spanning
the entire network but rather over each individual link. port
This reduces the overall network load because we do 45Mbps Radio To UCSD

not conduct multiple measurements over the same


segments. However, it still allows us to notice per- Passive and Active
formance changes on individual links as well as the Measurement (PAM)
Machine
network as a whole. It also allows us to notice con-
sistently high throughput which would point to a well Fig. 3. Diagram of a node’s measurement architecture
configured link.
The final active measurement we do is to conduct
a set of Mping tests once per week. These measure- C. Management Information Base Data
ments are conducted at night and allow us to better
understand the network’s capacity and buffering be- Management Information Base (MIB) data refers
havior. These measurements are all conducted from to the data recorded in the memory of routers, un-
a central server at University of California, San Diego interruptible power supplies (UPSs) and radios. We
/ San Diego Supercomputer Center (UCSD/SDSC) use this data to determine the status of our network
to numerous destinations to reduce the administra- as well as the individual links. As part of this, we
tion of these tests. This gives us a connection based look at the link integrity including signal level degra-
data set which is useful from the user perspective. dation and noise floor increases. Additionally, there
Because this test is very network intensive, we try to are alarm sensors that tell us when something goes
avoid performing it excessively on the network. wrong. On the UPSs, we monitor parameters like
power status, current draw and battery temperature.
These measurements allow us to determine the cur-
rent state of the network and also to understand cer-
B. Passive Measurements tain problems that have occurred. We make the raw
data available for those interested.
We have a distinctive architecture at each of our
major backbone nodes that allows us to take en-
coded traffic traces of our network activity in a variety D. Network Status
of ways (see Figure 3). This is accomplished through
a spanning port on the switch. A spanning port allows
We maintain these pages so that users, network
us to view traffic on any subset of switch ports we de-
administrators, and the general public can view cur-
sire. Currently, we conduct these measurements on
rent information about critical components of HP-
demand only.
WREN. We also have a mailing list that allows users
In addition to these on demand passive measure- to be notified of site outages. There are four status
ments we also conduct continuous Netflow [6] mea- pages. Each page details the current condition of one
surements on one of our Cisco Routers at a central aspect of the network. This involves a simple set of
backbone site on Mt. Woodson (see Figure 2). These measurements or for certain status pages MIB based
measurements are then sent back to our repository analysis. The first is the highest level and simply de-
for analysis. This allows us to understand what type notes the reachability of each site from UCSD/SDSC,
of data is flowing over our network, how much our the next two pages involve radio status and the last
network is being used and when. We are currently page involves UPS status conditions. Figure 4 shows
beginning analysis of this data set. an example of one of our radio status pages.
IP Current Radio NMU Link Alarm Alarm
Link Name
Address RSL Health Condition Summary Condition
UCSD- no alarms
172.16.1.4 -55 normal link up normal
>Mt.Woodson triggered
Mt.Woodson- no alarms
172.16.2.4 -56 normal link up normal
>UCSD triggered
Mt.Woodson- no alarms
172.16.2.5 -50 normal link up normal
>North Peak triggered
North Peak- no alarms
172.16.3.4 -55 normal link up normal
>Mt.Woodson triggered
North Peak- no alarms
Fig. 5. High number of severely errored seconds
172.16.3.5 -65 normal link up normal
>Stphn Peak triggered
Stphn Peak- no alarms
172.16.4.4 -65 normal link up normal
>North Peak triggered
Stphn Peak-
no alarms
>Mt.Laguna 172.16.4.5 -47 normal link up normal
triggered
Obsv
MLO->Stphn no alarms
172.16.5.4 -45 normal link up normal
Peak triggered

Fig. 4. Tsunami radio status page


Fig. 6. RSL values from bad link

E. Other Measurements
ment and analysis.
The last category is a category for all other mea-
surements performed. We have weather sensors at III. C ASE S TUDIES
various nodes that we can correlate with radio per-
formance in order to better understand how weather This section discusses a few critical network prob-
affects radio performance at these frequencies. An- lems we encountered and how the HPWREN Mea-
other measurement tool under this category is our set surement and Analysis Infrastructure helped us in-
of pan-tilt-zoom cameras. We have two cameras on vestigate these problems. Measurement and analy-
the network; one is at Mt. Woodson and the other is sis was a critical component in discovering the cause
at the Mt. Laguna Observatory (see Figure 2). There of each of these problems. In some situations we
are numerous uses for these cameras, but from a were unable to solve the problem easily, but in the
measurement perspective we are interested in cor- end we did at least find out what caused it. After
reading this section the reader might get the impres-
relating the performance of various links with visual
sion that network measurements are the only thing
weather conditions such as fog and cloud cover. For
needed to diagnose cause and effect. But in real-
example, a fixed weather station may never give you
enough information to detect an inversion layer but ity network measurements must be coupled with a
many times a person or a camera can easily spot significant amount of field work. Only then, can we
an inversion layer. An inversion layer is a region of define the problem and determine the cause.
air that quickly changes temperature, it can cause
A. A Radio Frequency (RF) Filter Problem
radio signals to bounce or bend upon impact which
can severely effect the performance of a link. You Shortly after installation of the HPWREN backbone
can occasionally identify these inversion layers by the to Mt. Laguna Observatory (MLO), we noticed high
clouds caught below them [7, chapter 22, pages 16- data loss and a significant bit error rate (BER) on
18]. the MLO to Stephenson Peak link (see Figure 2).
These are the measurements we currently conduct This caused the data flow on the link to be slow and
on HPWREN. We are developing analysis tools on interactive sessions were very jumpy. We started
a daily basis and adding them to our Web site at: collecting MIB data and soon had a graph showing
http://stat.hpwren.ucsd.edu/. Some of the goals we a marked number of severely errored seconds (see
hope to accomplish include: support of network de- Figure 5). BER is the rate at which bit errors oc-
velopment through the use of analysis, a better un- cur in the data. Errored seconds are the number of
derstanding of the HPWREN network and its evo- seconds that have detected one or more bit errors.
lution, and finally an understanding of how best to Severely errored seconds are the number of seconds
instrument a wireless network for network measure- with a BER greater than 10 6 . The maximum value
Fig. 7. Timeline of events including analysis data

for errored seconds and severely errored seconds is this point we also saw asymmetry in the link. After
1. increasing the power at both ends of the link, the er-
We also noticed that the received signal level rored seconds on the MLO to Stephenson Peak link
(RSL), a measure of the remote power being re- remained unchanged; however the errored seconds
ceived, was the lowest of all of our backbone nodes on the Stephenson Peak to MLO link increased. At
(see Figure 6). This was unusual because this link this point the problem was isolated to the radio at
was the shortest and had the best RSL when the net- Stephenson Peak which pointed towards MLO. The
work was being designed. (Note that on this link a fact that distortion increased with more power lead
good RSL level is approximately -48 dBm.) us to believe the problem might lie with the power
Our initial reasoning was that the signal level was amplifier or RF filter circuit.
too low. Based on our design calculations of -50 dBm At this point we realized that we had not tried a re-
we decided that equipment must be faulty or not in- placement filter at Stephenson Peak. This was due
stalled correctly. This is where the field work came to technical reasons; we did not realize it was an is-
into play. Both sites were visited numerous times, an- sue at the time. Had we not made the measurements
tenna alignment was checked, feed horns and feed- and performed the field work we would never have re-
lines were replaced, finally the radios were replaced alized that it was an issue. By this time a new set of
with a spare (one at a time). All of this made no signif- radios became available. The next day, the radio and
icant change in the RSL or the persistent errors. Fi- filter at Stephenson Peak were replaced.
nally it was decided to temporarily turn up the power Immediately, the signal level rose to over -50 dBm
level to see if we could increase the RSL and reduce (see Figure 7). The errored seconds also stopped oc-
the errored seconds. At the same time the power was curring and we had no detectable bit error rate. Later
increased on one of our other links to see what would in the day we went to the Mt. Laguna Observatory to
happen. turn back down the power. While we were there we
Within one week we noticed that the other link had were able to achieve 40 Mbps from MLO to the coast
less errored seconds. But on the MLO link we no- (UCSD/SDSC). The top throughput you can achieve
ticed the errored seconds had increased drastically with these radios is approximately 40 Mbps as proto-
after we changed the power level (see Figure 7). At col headers take up the remaining bandwidth. This
network are designed with a fade margin of 22 dBm
and to date these links have not exhibited such con-
nectivity problems. If the North Peak to Stephenson
Peak link was also designed with a fade margin of 22
dBm, this problem might not have occurred.
An additional interesting factor to note is how
quickly the link RSL dropped by 14 dBm to -76 dBm.
Fig. 8. RSL during the week of the storm; storm occurred on Within an hour of the onset of the storm the connec-
April 21, 2001 tivity was lost. This sharp drop occurred right before
1:00 AM on the April 21, 2001; and the RSL remained
was the first time we had been successful at achiev- at this low level until after 8:00 AM on April 22, 2001.
ing optimum throughput. By that evening researchers Due to the storm, a field trip to these sites could not
at Mt. Laguna Observatory were sending their im- be arranged and the link characteristics could only
ages directly to San Diego State University for analy- be studied and monitored using the HPWREN Mea-
sis and teaching. Within 18 hours images from MLO surement and Analysis Infrastructure. By the time
were being used to teach a class; this was a great im- the storm ended, the RSL level was back to nor-
provement. With the old dialup/tape drive network it mal (around -62 dBm) and the connection was re-
would have taken significantly longer from mountain stored. This was evidence that the problem was en-
to classroom. tirely weather related.
In the end, if we had not made these measure- This experience points out yet another important
ments and conducted this analysis we would not issue to consider when planning a network installa-
have found the problem. But on the other hand, if tion - how quickly the environmental conditions im-
we had not done all of the field work we would have pact the RSL. While this problem was resolved us-
been equally unsuccessful. That is the most impor- ing the measurement and analysis data alone, most
tant lesson we learned from this exercise. problems require a site visit. During adverse weather
conditions, a field trip to the problematic site is not
feasible and measures such as the following should
B. A Weather Problem
be taken beforehand to avoid similar problems.
During a recent spring snow storm, the current sig- One of the most obvious solutions is to increase
nal level at North Peak dropped drastically. It dropped the transmit power so that even with a drop of about
so low that the North Peak to Stephenson Peak link 22 dBm, the RSL remains well above the threshold
did not have any connectivity for the entire duration of value and connectivity is maintained. Care should
the storm. Even though some attenuation of the RSL be taken to not violate the Federal Communica-
due to rain was observed in the past, it was never tions Commission (FCC) rules regarding the trans-
expected that RSL values would drop close to the mit power. Hence we could not increase the transmit
threshold value (-79 dBm). Figure 8 shows the RSL power for the problematic link.
values during the snow storm. Another solution to improve the link is to upgrade
In Figure 8 it can be seen that before the onset the feed line which is the cable that connects the an-
of the storm, the RSL value fluctuated around -62 tenna to the radio. Currently, we are using 5/8” heliax
dBm. Within an hour of the onset of the storm the and lmr-400 feed line; we plan to upgrade it to waveg-
RSL dropped by 14 dBm to -76 dBm. uide feed line. The waveguide feed line has much
A fade margin of 22 dBm is generally enough for less attenuation as compared to 5/8” heliax and lmr-
a connection to survive a storm in the San Diego 400 feed line.
County area. The fade margin is the expected maxi- We chose to replace the cable but another possible
mum change in RSL due to weather conditions. It can solution would have been to change the antenna on
be seen that the change in link RSL did not exceed North Peak from a six foot antenna to an eight foot
the 22 dBm fade margin. However, this link was de- antenna. Using the eight foot antenna would have
signed with a fade margin of approximately 15 dBm given us better gain and as a result, a better RSL.
(because use of a bigger antenna was not feasible In the end, this experience also highlights a criti-
at this site) and hence a 14 dBm drop was enough cal problem for institutions and researchers who rely
to kill our connectivity. Most of the other links in the on connectivity to meet their daily needs, such as
Fig. 9. RSL during week Fig. 10. Bit error rate during week

ecological field stations and seismic sensors. These


groups need connectivity 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week and typically they rely on real-time data. Loss
of connectivity even momentarily can result in loss of
data and prove to be quite costly.
If it was not for the HPWREN Measurement and
Analysis Infrastructure, we would not have discov-
Fig. 11. Errored seconds during week
ered the problem during the snow storm itself. We
would have had to wait until the storm had subsided
and eventually a field trip would have been conducted and the radios were almost continuously registering
which might not have discovered the problem. This severely errored seconds. The A1 radios (A1 radios
approach would have been very time consuming and use a frequency of rx. 5.800, tx 5.750) were having
it also may not have led us to the cause. very little problem receiving the A2 radios. As a re-
sult we were able to determine the interference was
C. An Interference Problem on the 5.750 GHz frequency. In other words, the in-
terfering signal was over powering the receivers and
The last problem we would like to discuss is one therefore causing our data to be corrupted. What-
that involved external events that in the end caused ever was causing the interference was using much
our network to behave poorly. The UNI-I/II bands are more power because they were affecting all of our
allocated to unlicensed operation on a secondary ba- A2 radios. The interference receded in the evening
sis. The primary use is for military radar. They have of June 15th. We have not seen the problem reoccur,
a frequency range of 5.25-5.925 GHz [8]. so we suspect someone was trying some experimen-
As a result we observed an interesting situation tal hardware that they eventually turned off.
where for approximately one work week [four days
In this instance we were unable to find a way to
from June 12 (Tuesday) - June 15 (Friday)] the link
avoid this problem. However, it serves as a reminder
was severely impaired by what we suspect were
that with most unlicensed spectrum we are not the
radar tests.
primary users of the allocated frequency range. And
Initially, we thought the problem was just occurring as such, we need to plan for that when developing
on one or two radios, specifically the radio at North our network. It also would have been beneficial to
Peak that pointed to Mt. Woodson. A site visit was do a more thorough analysis of the data before we
made and everything tested, including alignment of went into the field. It would also have been useful
the antenna. In the end, even replacing the radio left to have a measure of noise floor for the Tsunami ra-
us with the same interference. During the field work dios. For the 2.4 GHz gear we selected, this informa-
it was noticed that more than just this link was being tion is measurable without taking the link offline. This
affected. We also noticed that none of the affected would have allowed us to see the noise floor increase
sites saw a decrease in the received signal level. We and would have led us to look into interference issues
have included a graph of the RSL (Figure 9), bit error sooner.
rate (Figure 10) and errored seconds (Figure 11) for
North Peak. The data from other sites looked similar.
IV. C ONCLUSION
The only indication that this was occurring was that
all of the A2 radios (A2 radios use a frequency of rx. In this paper we discussed our Measurement and
5.750, tx 5.800) were getting very large bit error rates Analysis Infrastructure as well as some case stud-
ies in which we used these measurements to deter-
mine the causes. By doing this we have shown that
measurement and analysis activities while crucial for
any network, are especially so for wireless networks.
Additionally, by describing our infrastructure we have
defined a set of measurements we feel best repre-
sent the type of measurements involved in a wireless
network.

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was sponsored by the National Science
Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. ANI-
9807479 and Grant No. ANI-0087344 to the Univer-
sity of California, San Diego. This work was done in
close collaboration with the National Laboratory for
Applied Network Research Measurement and Oper-
ations Analysis Team (NLANR/MOAT) [3]. We would
like to thank Jose Otero and Dewayne Hendricks for
their invaluable contributions to this paper. We would
also like to thank Maureen C. Curran and Kim Bruch
for their reviews of this paper.

R EFERENCES
[1] High Performance Wireless Research and Education Net-
work (HPWREN), http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/
[2] HPWREN Measurement and Analysis Web Server,
http://stat.hpwren.ucsd.edu/
[3] National Laboratory for Applied Network Research Mea-
surement and Operations Analysis Team (NLANR/MOAT),
http://moat.nlanr.net/
[4] NLANR/MOAT Active Measurement Project (AMP),
http://moat.nlanr.net/AMP/
[5] McGregor, A., Braun, H-W., and Brown, J., The NLANR
Network Analysis Infrastructure, IEEE Communications
Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 122-128, May 2000
[6] CAIDA, cflowd: Traffic Analysis Tool Web site,
http://www.caida.org/tools/measurement/cflowd/
[7] The ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs 1993, 70th edi-
tion, The American Radio Relay League Inc., Newington,
CT, 1992
[8] Dewayne Hendrix, Member, FCC Technological Advisory
Council, http://www.dandin.com/

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