AN ARCHITECTURE FOR LARGE-SCALE INTERNET MEASUREMENT

Historically, the Internet has been woefully under-measured and under- instrumented. The problem is only getting worse with the network's eve r-increasing size. We discuss the goals and requirements for building a ''measurement infrastructure'' for the Internet, in which a collecti on of measurement ''platforms'' cooperatively measure the properties o f Internet paths and clouds by exchanging test traffic among themselve s. The key emphasis of the architecture, which forms the underpinnings of the National Internet Measurement infrastructure (NIMI) project, i s on tackling problems related to scale. Consequently, the architectur e emphasizes decentralized control of measurements; strong authenticat ion and security; mechanisms for both maintaining tight administrative control over who can perform what measurements using which platforms, and delegation of some forms of measurement as a site's measurement p olicy permits; and simple configuration and maintenance of platforms.