Mini-Project #4
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This page describes mini-project #4 for Computer
Networks.
Understanding traffic is a very important part of understanding the performance
of computer networks. A first step is often a characterization of traffic
from an existing application (and/or from an environment) of interest. For this
project the student will characterize broadcast traffic on the Department
network. This mini-project may be completed in pairs (two students) or
individually with help only to be given by the instructor.
A one day (24 hour) trace of broadcast traffic as received on the Ethernet port
of campus/corporate LAN is
here.
Included in the zip file is a text file with packet summary information.
The requirements for this project are simple, but challenging. You are to
determine what questions are interesting and of value to ask with respect to
broadcast traffic and then answer these questions. Of particular interest
is the overhead to both network bandwidth and host processing that broadcast
traffic creates.
Requirements
The requirements for this mini-project are as follows:
- Characterize the traffic in general terms starting with a rate plot and
summary statistics.
- Develop a list of interesting questions that you can "ask" the trace. An
interesting question has some engineering relevance where an answer can lead
to something being improved.
- Answer the questions by performing the necessary analysis.
- Submit an IEEE Computer Society style paper describing your analysis and
findings.
Deliverables
Each student (or pair of students) must deliver the following:
- A maximum five-page paper written in IEEE conference paper format and
style describing the questions to be answered, relevance of the questions,
analysis conducted, analysis results, and meaning or significance of the
results. Related work and a list of references are also expected. The
final paper must be submitted as a PDF file.
- The Word template for IEEE Computer Society conference papers is
here.
- The IEEE Computer Society Style Guide is
here.
Grading
Grading is as follows:
- General characterization -- 20 points
- Questions asked -- 15 points
- Analysis results based on questions asked -- 25 points
- Insights and engineering significance -- 20 points
- Related work -- 10 points
- Conclusions -- 10 points
Points can (and will) be deducted for sloppishness including an inability to
follow the required IEEE formatting. The final submission is expected to be
"camera copy" quality.
Notes, advice, and hints
Some notes:
- I am happy to discuss with students possible questions of interest for analyzing
the trace.
- You may need to develop simple tools to manipulate the trace. You may find
that some of the tools here
are useful.
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Last update on November 25, 2014
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