Advantages and Uses of One-Way Packet Loss Information

Albert Song

Stefan Savage at UCSD has developed a method for detecting one-way
packet loss between hosts called Sting. This technique allows for an
effective means of measuring net congestion and bandwidth that does
not suffer from the inaccuracies of other programs which use roundtrip
times or rely on special network infrastructures.

Using Stefan's technique, one can be more efficient in selecting
servers to transfer data. For example, ftp servers or mirrors sites
can be tested with Sting to determine the best connection. This
project will discuss the use of Savage's method in the context of
multihost connections. The effectiveness and usefulness of Sting in
these situations will be compared against other techniques that
measure packet loss/latency/bandwidth information along with those
that require special infrstructures for their measurements.