Managing and Monitoring the Internet
The Managing and Monitoring the Internet project has successfully resulted in a spinout company called Monitoring Division. Their website is at www.monitoringdivision.com
The Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) project takes an innovative approach to development of technologies that provide cost-effective performance monitoring of core networks at the physical and the protocol layers.
Media Releases
- December 16, 2007: MAMI signs first customer. See media release
- October 16, 2007: NICTA to help telcos slash costs. See media release
The Challenge
As the internet grows in reach and capacity, current network infrastructure needs to evolve into a very large-scale interconnected network. Such a large scale network cannot be managed in a piece-wise fashion. Significant levels of network automation have to be built-in with physical transmission layers and network control layers working in harmony to manage the network in a dynamic and intelligent fashion.
As the core of the future internet becomes more optical, more dynamic and more reconfigurable than current systems, it presents more complicated set of design and engineering challenges. All components of the network will require revaluation and redesign. To realise the potential gains from these next generation networks, network management systems will required greater autonomy and functionality. They will require an active picture of what is happening inside the network, at the physical layer. Cost effective solutions are required to provide this information, monitoring and measuring the health of optical transport networks in a dynamic fashion.
In addition, internet infrastructure will require solutions to measure, explore and secure large scale interconnected networks at the higher protocol layers. Traditionally, internet measurement has been seen as monitoring network health, quality of service, and collecting traffic usage statistics. However, new measurement technologies can be effectively used in dynamic routing, flow control, traffic engineering, and network security, based on end-to-end measurements which do not require access to the network core and which are close to user experience. They require development and characterization of active probing methods and development of measurement aware protocols.
See also:
What will this research achieve?
The MAMI project will develop technologies for measuring the performance of internet at both the physical transport and the protocol layers.
Who will benefit?
The end result of this work will be a less expensive, more reliable communications network, resulting in richer on-line experiences for internet users.
What are the key features?
The team is spread across multiple sub-projects. Work is progressing on a number of monitors to accurately measure single impairments in optical network, including Optical Signal to Noise ratio (OSNR), and Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD), as well as a more general, multi-impairment monitor. There are also activities on characterizing the effects of impairments on signal quality, field monitoring of live networks, and transmission techniques to reduce the effects of impairments on data quality. Techniques for accurate measurement of bandwidth in 802.11 networks, clock synchronisation across networks, and remote measurement of delay and loss using internet tomography, and also being pursued.
Progress update
The project began in October 2004 and is scheduled to run for three years. By 2006, the team had developed and patented techniques for monitoring both Optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), and for measuring multiple impairments (MIM). Work in 2007 is focussing on commercialisation of the OSNR monitor, and further development of the MIM, to enhance its feature set. Licensing of software to provide enhanced, inexpensive, clock synchronisation over the internet is expected in 2007.
Research team:
Trevor Anderson (Project Leader), Vijay Arya, Masud Bakaul, Ken Clarke, Sarah Dods, Peter Farrell, Kerry Hinton, Adam Kowalczyk, Thas Nirmalathas, Gavin Pearce Julien Ridoux, William Shieh, Darryl Veitch, Elaine Wong, David Wright, Michael Yarrow
Duration: 36 months
Participants: We are in discussion with a number of telecommunications carriers and network equipment manufacturers.
Updated SD 19 Dec 2007