ITR: A Multiresolution Analysis for the Global Internet

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

An interdisciplinary team, bridging academia and industry, proposes a united effort to study the dynamics of the global Internet, moving beyond the traditional single-timescale, single-network, single-protocol paradigm to a description that compactly incorporates a wide range of time-scales, a broad spectrum of spatial network topology structures, andmultiple protocols interacting with one another and across the different networking layers. Achieving such a global, multi-scale, and multi-layer understanding of complex large-scale networks is imperative for the successful design and development of the next-generation Internet protocols and engineering tools, where issues related to robustness,scalability, and efficiency take center stage. In this united effort, there are three main ingredients. First, the researchers plan to fully exploit a new breed of datasets of network-wide measurements - unprecedented in volume and quality - that are the result of recent exciting networking research projects, such as the National Internet Measurement Infrastructure project (NIMI). Another source of such data will be various Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as AT&T, employer of one of the PIs, which will also provide supplementary funding if this proposal is accepted. Second, the researchers will rely on a new breed of network simulation tools, such as SSFNET, largely developed by another of our PIs, and capable of simulating internetworks unprecedented in scale and detail. All these new measurements, whether real or virtual, will constitute huge datasets with very high and networking-specific semantic content, creating completely novel challenges for data analysis. This is where the third ingredient comes in: multiscale and multiresolution/wavelet techniques, developed by several of the PIs, will take center stage when it comes to analyzing, visualizing, and uncovering the rich information that is contained in these network measurements. Although the flexibility and the speed of wavelet decompositions have been put to good use in the past in many applications, including the empirical observation of certain types of time-scaling behaviors in measured network traffic, the technology as it is known and used today cannot yet cope with the fascinating new challenges posed by the available and anticipated Internet data. A central objective of this project is to develop Internet-appropriate multiresolution techniques that match the multiscale nature of the underlying Internet structure and can be validated step-by-step against measurements. The researchers expect that tools and theories that have been developed in the context of computer graphics, irregular sampling, and scattered data approximation will be utilized to this end. The ultimate goal of the proposed research effort is to identify interesting patterns that can be extracted from the measured data via fast algorithms, that are linked to physical concepts and are meaningful in the networking context, that characterize different states or behaviors of the network, and that can aid the development of novel network measurement analysis and visualization techniques in support of a new generation of monitoring and engineering tools for future Internet architectures. Given that so much of this area is still uncharted, it may be not realistic to hope to attain this goal in a few years' time. Nevertheless, we are convinced that only an interdisciplinary effort like ours can hope to achieve anything in this direction; we expect that our collaboration will lead to deeper insights and understanding; a first identification of models, patterns, the influences of various external factors and protocols; and an initial glimpse at the underlying "physics of the Internet" - a solid understanding of how basic networking mechanisms and user behaviors contribute to the fascinating dynamic observed in today's Internet.