Assignment #2 for Capacity Planning                                KJC (8/23/01)
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DUE: 09/20 in class

For assignment #2 you are to "crunch" network round-trip time (RTT) data
collected with the ping tool.  You are given four data sets, they are:

ncsu_pm.txt = four hours of RTT data for USF to NCSU taken at 1pm on a weekday
ncsu_am.txt = four hours of RTT data for USF to NCSU taken at 1am on a weekday
mer_pm.txt = four hours of RTT data for USF to Meredith College taken at 1pm on
             a weekday
mer_am.txt = four hours of RTT data for USF to Meredith College taken at 1am on
             a weekday

For each data set determine the mean, variance, standard deviation, and
coefficient of variation for RTT.  Plot (e.g., using Excel) a histogram
for each data set.  Finally, test if there is any autocorrelation between
RTTs to a lag of 10.  Note that at the bottom of the ping files the ping
program gives the min/mean/max RTT.  You, obviosly, must compute this
yourself... but you have something to check against.

Draw some insights from the data.  Make some conclusions, or at least some
speculations, on the effects of time of day and network connection on RTT.
Make a hypothesis on what causes the differences and think-up an experiment
that could prove the hypothesis.  You DO NOT have to perform the experiment.
Note that NCSU and Meredith college are both in Raleigh, NC and are within
2 miles of each other.  NCSU is attached via the Internet2 and Meredith
College is attached via the Internet1.

HINT #1: Be sure to read the "readme.txt" included in p_trace.zip.

HINT #2: The are many tools on the tools page to help you compute summary
         statistics on time series.

HINT #3: To mark a block in Word, press the Shift key and then select the
         block with your mouse.

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