pathChirp

Efficient Available
Bandwidth Estimation
Vinay Ribeiro
Rice University

Rolf Riedi Jiri Navratil
Rich Baraniuk Les Cottrell
(Rice) (SLAC)
Network Model
Packet delay = constant term
(propagation,
service time)
+
variable term
(queuing delay)


End-to-end paths
Multi-hop
No packet reordering
Router queues
FIFO
Constant service rate


Available Bandwidth
Unused capacity along
path
)
] , 0 [
( min ] , 0 [
number
queue
T
T A
C T B
i
i
i
=
=
Available bandwidth:
Goal: use end-to-end probing to estimate
available bandwidth
Applications
Network monitoring


Server selection
Route selection (e.g. BGP)
SLA verification
Congestion control
Available Bandwidth
Probing Tool Requirements
Fast estimate within few RTTs

Unobtrusive introduce light probing load

Accurate




No topology information (e.g. link speeds)

Robust to multiple congested links



No topology information (e.g. link speeds)

Robust to multiple congested links


Principle of Self-Induced
Congestion
Advantages
No topology information required
Robust to multiple bottlenecks
TCP-Vegas uses self-induced congestion
principle

Probing rate < available bw no delay increase

Probing rate > available bw delay increases

Trains of Packet-Pairs (TOPP)
[Melander et al]
) (
s
t A
) (
r
t A
Vary sender packet-pair spacing
Compute avg. receiver packet-pair spacing
Constrained regression based estimate

Shortcoming: packet-pairs
do not capture temporal
queuing behavior useful for
available bandwidth
estimation


Packet-pairs
Packet train
Pathload [Jain & Dovrolis]
CBR packet trains
Vary rate of successive trains
Converge to available bandwidth


Shortcoming
Efficiency: only one data rate per train

Chirp Packet Trains
Exponentially decrease packet spacing within
packet train
Wide range of probing rates
Efficient: few packets



100Mbps - 1 packets, 13 4 . 1 =
Chirps vs. Packet-Pairs
Each chirp train of N packets contains N-1 packet
pairs at different spacings





Reduces load by 50%
Chirps: N-1 packet spacings, N packets
Packet-pairs: N-1 packet spacings, 2N-2
packets

Captures temporal queuing behavior



Chirps vs. CBR Trains
Multiple rates in each chirping train

Allows one estimate per-chirp

Potentially more efficient estimation





CBR Cross-Traffic Scenario
Point of onset of
increase in
queuing delay
gives available
bandwidth
Bursty Cross-Traffic
Scenario
Goal: exploit information in queuing delay
signature
PathChirp Methodology
I. Per-packet pair
available
bandwidth,
(k=packet number)
II. Per-chirp available
bandwidth



III. Smooth per-chirp
estimate over
sliding time window
of size

A
A
=
k
k
k
k k
t
t E
D
k
E
t
Self-Induced Congestion
Heuristic
Definitions: delay of packet k
inst rate at packet k
k k k k
k k k k
R E q q
R E q q
< <
> >
+
+
1
1
=
k
q
k k
t R A = size/ packet
Excursions
Must take care while using self-induced
congestion principle
Segment signature into excursions from x-axis
Valid excursions are those consisting of at least
L packets
Apply only to valid excursions
k k
R E <
Setting Per-Packet Pair
Available Bandwidth
Valid
excursion
increasing
queuing delay k k
k k
R E
R E
=
<
n k
k k
R E
R E
=
>
Valid
excursion
decreasing
queuing delay
n k
k k
R E
R E
=
<
Last excursion Invalid
excursions
n k
R E =
pathChirp Tool
UDP probe packets
No clock synchronization required, only uses
relative queuing delay within a chirp duration
Computation at receiver
Context switching detection
User specified average probing rate

open source distribution at spin.rice.edu
Performance with Varying
Parameters
Vary probe size,
spread factor
Probing load const.
Mean squared error
(MSE) of estimates
Result: MSE decreases with
increasing probe size, decreasing
spread factor
Multi-hop Experiments
First queue is
bottleneck
Compare
No cross-traffic at
queue 2
With cross-traffic
at queue 2
Result: MSE close in
both scenarios
Internet Experiments
3 common hops
between SLACRice
and ChicagoRice
paths
Estimates fall in
proportion to
introduced Poisson
traffic
Comparison with TOPP
30% utilization
Equal avg. probing
rates for pathChirp and
TOPP
Result: pathChirp
outperforms TOPP
70% utilization
Comparison with Pathload
100Mbps links
pathChirp uses 10
times fewer bytes
for comparable
accuracy
Available
bandwidth
Efficiency Accuracy
pathchirp pathload pathChirp
10-90%
pathload
Avg.min-max
30Mbps 0.35MB 3.9MB 19-29Mbps 16-31Mbps
50Mbps 0.75MB 5.6MB 39-48Mbps 39-52Mbps
70Mbps 0.6MB 8.6MB 54-63Mbps 63-74Mbps
Conclusions
Chirp trains
Probe at multiple rates simultaneously
Efficient estimates
pathChirp
Self-induced congestion
Excursion detection
Experiments
Internet experiments promising
Large probe packet size, small spread factor better
Outperforms existing tools
open-source code is available at
spin.rice.edu
Demo during 10:30a.m. break