Characterization by Measurement of a CDMA 1x EVDO Network

Mark Claypool, Robert Kinicki, William Lee, Mingzhe Li, and Gregory Ratner

CS Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609 USA

Presenter: Mingzhe Li [lmz@cs.wpi.edu]

Wireless Internet Conference (WICON06) Boston, Massachusetts, August 2006

Motivation
EVDO 3G cellular data networks
Provides more bandwidth More applications:
Throughput sensitive Latency sensitive Multimedia streaming

Current research of cellular data network performance

Theoretical analysis and simulations Measurements studies
2G/2.5G networks Focus on throughput Few latency measurements and bandwidth estimations

We need more characterization on EVDO networks. 2

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Introduction
Measurement based characterization of EVDO network
TCP throughput Round trip time Loss rate Bandwidth estimation

Gauge the ability of EVDO to support the QoS of a range of applications

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Outline
Introduction Methodology
Testbed Tools Experiment Design

Analysis Conclusion and future work

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Testbed
50 Mbps uplink

Measure downlink network to the laptop

Sierra Wireless Aircard 580 PCMCIA EVDO Network Card Gnu Linux kernel 2.6.11

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Tools
Measurements
TCP Throughput RTT and loss rate npath

Tools
Gnu Wget. Standard Linux ping. Loosely based on pathrate Bandwidth estimation using packet pair/train

out max( in ,
R L min i 0,..., H Bi

L ) Bi
L B

L B R

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Experimen design
Each test includes:
Measure wireless signal strength Wget downloads 20 Mbyte file Ping server 100 times npath: capacity estimation
Packet pairs length: 25 packets Packet size: 1472, 1200, 1000, and 800 bytes Repeat 30 times for each packet size

Each test takes 12 minutes in total

Run every 30 minutes for a week

November 28, 2005 to December 4, 2005
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Outline
Introduction Methodology
Testbed Tools Experimental Desgin

Analysis Conclusion and future work

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Analysis
Data collected
48 runs each day for 7 days All tests with excellent signal strength
-90 to -83 dBm

TCP throughput: tcpdump and tcptrace RTT and packet loss: ping Network capacity: npath.

Analysis focus
Week day: Wednesday November 30, 2005 Weekend: Saturday December 3, 2005
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TCP Throughput (cont.)

TCP throughput lower than theoretically EVDO networks No visual correlation between throughput and the time of day Satisfactory for most Internet applications
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TCP Throughput

TCP throughput are consistent between tests Slightly higher TCP throughput for weekend
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Round trip time of a weekday

Average RTT are consistent between tests Maximum RTT vary greatly. No visual correlation between RTT and the time of day.
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CCDF of RTT

Median RTT 200ms is too high for interactive applications. Maximum RTT around 1 second can seriously Impact the performance of interactive applications.
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Bandwidth Estimation
Tests of a weekday

Median of estimated bandwidth is consistent 5th percentile of estimated bandwidth varies.

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Bandwidth Estimation (cont.)

Tests for weekday and weekend at 5:30pm

Bandwidth estimations are consistent. Only a small percentage of packet pairs get low estimatiions

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Summary and Conclusion

3G EVDO network provides higher throughput than 2G/2.5G cellular networks The high RTT may impact the performance of interactive applications Bandwidth estimations are consistent, suggesting packet pairs are sufficient for bandwidth estimation. Neither throughput, round-trip time, nor bandwidth estimation correlates with time of day or the day of the week.

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Future work
More Characterizations
Mobility Poor signal quality Variable traffic load Comparison with other cellar networks

Application performance
Interactive applications (games, VoIP) Multimedia streaming applications
WICON06 Boston, Massachusetts

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Characterization by Measurement of a CDMA 1x EVDO Network

Mark Claypool, Robert Kinicki, William Lee, Mingzhe Li, and Gregory Ratner

CS Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609 USA

Presenter: Mingzhe Li [lmz@cs.wpi.edu]

Wireless Internet Conference (WICON06) Boston, Massachusetts, August 2006