I2MP - IKR Internet Measurement Platform

The I²MP is a IKR developement of a passive measurement platform for network traffic, currently for Ethernet. The emphasis was to develop a high-performant platform which can cope reliablely with high-speed data network link speeds and providing high-precision time accuracy while remaining a flexible and scalable design.

Key properties and features

  • High-precision passive measurement platform for network traffic
  • Measurement at up to Gigabit Ethernet link speeds
  • Support of eletrical and optical Ethernet interfaces
  • Time and performance critical tasks performed highly accurately in HW
  • Flexible and intelligent filtering on layer 2-4 header fields of IP-based protocols and at arbitrary frame positions
  • Smart, filter-dependent selection of captured area of a frame (header-only or variable-length)
  • Re-programmable and flexible design
  • Scalabe architecture
  • A large range of status counters for monitoring measurement sessions (online readable)
  • Support of different trace file formats (pcap, ASCII)

Architecture

The I2MP is build up by a Hardware-unit and a PC-unit.

  • HW-unit
    • Realisation of performance critical and time critical tasks
    • Developed on the UHP (Universal Hardware Platform) based on FPGAs
  • PC-unit
    • Realisation of the storage, control and configuration tasks
    • In-house software for capturing and pre-processing the raw measurement data
    • Based on a stripped Linux system
  • Communication between HW-unit and PC-unit via a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet link
  • Multiple data records (captured frame area and meta-information) are tansmitted in container to PC-Unit
image of the i2mp-architecture

Measurement Contexts and Traces

  • Selfnet: Traces from a dormitory network at the University of Stuttgart
  • IKR network uplink to the campus network

The following trace was captured in one of the two dormitory network with the measurement platform I²MP. In this dormitory network Selfnet are approx. 800 to 1000 actively connected students. Each student has a 100Mbps access rate and the dormitory network is directly connected to the R&D network "BelWü" (scientific network of the federal state Baden-Württemberg).

Traces
Trace name Date/Period Location Short description
UST2 28.10.2004 21:11 - 01.11.2004 15:42 Uplink of dormitory network 5.7*108 packets,
start on Thursday, end on Monday

 

A more detailed description of the I²MP can be obtained here.

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