NeTS: Small: Exploring the Design Space of Bandwidth Estimation Methods Using Packet Sequence Information

University Of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to design and develop, for the first time, a novel class of sequence-based bandwidth comparison and estimation methods for network environments with faulty receiver-side timestamping. The proposed work is fundamentally different from the current time-based bandwidth estimation methods, because this work is based on the packet sequence information at a receiver (i.e., the arriving order of packets) instead of the packet time information at the receiver (e.g., the exact arrival time of each packet). This investigation consists of the following three major components. 1) Relative Bandwidth Comparison: Design and develop a class of sequence-based bandwidth comparison methods, which relatively compare the bandwidth information of multiple paths instead of accurately estimating the bandwidth information of each individual path. The proposed bandwidth comparison methods can determine not only which path is faster but also how much faster using only the packet sequence information. 2) Absolute Bandwidth Estimation: Design and develop a class of sequence-based bandwidth estimation methods, which can accurately estimate the bandwidth information of an individual path using only the packet sequence information. 3) Multi-Path Congestion Control: Design and develop bandwidth comparison based multi-path congestion control algorithms to support emerging multi-homed hosts. It is expected that the bandwidth comparison and estimation methods to be developed in this project will be useful not only for networking researchers but also for the large number of users of cloud computing applications. To achieve an even broader impact, the investigator plans to actively work with open source cloud monitoring projects and add the developed tools into their applications. The investigator will continue to actively recruit undergraduate, female, and minority students into the research projects, and to be committed to teaching and curriculum development. Several networking related courses and the undergraduate senior design course offered in the department will be enhanced with more recent cloud network topics and cloud-based hand-on projects, and research results obtained from this project will be incorporated into the courses.