Sep 13, 2007 - for better and cost-effective operation. - to enhance ... The COST Action is the right "soft" instrument. - based on "soft" ... allows for "critical mass" to be reached ... support discussion forums, tematic mailing lists, ... even blogs !
Proposal of a new COST Action on Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Hearing in Brussels 13th Sept. 2007 Dr. Fabio Ricciato
Brussel 13.09.2007
Background The Internet is complex and evolving - in the infrastructure : technology upgrades, capacity upgrades, new capabilities ... - the usage environment : new applications, different transport protocols, usage patterns ...
Same applies to its component networks - ISP networks, research networks, ...
Consequences - networks are difficult to understand - are difficult (and costly) to operate - are exposed to errors, failures, attacks ...
Background Monitoring the traffic is the key for monitoring the network - for better understanding (infrastructure + usage) - for better and cost-effective operation - to enhance robustness, security and reliability
Traffic Monitoring and Analysis (TMA) - an umbrella term to identify different techniques, with different micro-objectives - but the same macro-goal : understand what's going on in the network
Evolving system - not a one-shot task
TMA must be a process
Research on TMA TMA is an interesting topic for research ☺ - monitoring equipment now affordable: acquisition cards, large storage, etc. - traffic analysis: good ground for theoretical work and multi-disciplinary research - statistics, signal processing, data minings, ...
- the Internet is a nice playground for researchers :-)
Many EU research groups involved in TMA ☺ Some groups have access to real data & infrastructures - Mostly from campus network - Few from operational public networks
Research on TMA but ... Much research work, limited industrial impact -
TMA techniques poorly adopted (if at all) by operators gap between curiosity-driven research and real problems ? problems in innovation transfer ? seems that industry and researchers don't talk much to each other ...
NB: sharing data / traces from commercial networks is generally not possible (yet) - But sharing know-how is !
Research on TMA Highly fragmented research - each research group picks (invents?) its own problem, identifies its own solution, develops its own tool, validates it on its own data ... (and eventually publishes its own paper) - poor sharing / exchange / reusage of tools - no common framework - lack of mutual validation of the results - not a common understanding of the problems - it seems that researchers don't talk to each other either ... - EU TMA researchers do not constitute a "community"
Objective of the Action Inject coordination - between research groups - between researchers and industry
Promote sharing - of operational know-how - of tools - of results
Build up a community !! - out of a set of (more or less) decoupled research groups... - and interested industries (telcos, vendors)
Role of the Action The new COST Action will act as the catalyst for the EU TMA community to emerge Extended TMA Community
TMA Action (community core)
A soft community building process is needed - don't set constraints, but suggest common directions - preserve independence and freedom of research - bottom-up consensus building about problems/tools/applications etc.
Why a COST Action ? The COST Action is the right "soft" instrument - based on "soft" collaboration - meetings, exchanges, collaborative platforms, ... - no "hard" output commitments as in IP/STREP projects
- has "soft" boundaries - as opposite to hard-perimeter consortia as in FP7 projects - "free to join" leads to inclusion (rather than exclusion)
- allows for "critical mass" to be reached - large number of participants is important - to give the sense of a "open EU community" - rather than "yet another closed lobby" (!) - (but large size has disadvantages too, ...)
TMA Portal A community needs community tools - Will be provided by the Action - e.g. TMA portal, forums, meetings, etc.
TMA Portal - more than just "Action's website" - not just a trace/tool repository - promote usage of existing MOME database
- will enable sharing of know-how, ideas, experience ... - among researchers - between industry and researchers
- wil be the qualified point of reference for - TMA researchers outside EU - researchers from other fields (
help cross-fertilization)
TMA Portal An active portal - index published material on TMA: papers, reports, ... - with public posting to comment / annotate / confute them
- support discussion forums, tematic mailing lists, ... even blogs ! - focused on informal and technical interactions - especially useful to leverage the enthusiasm of young researchers - e.g. "Last week we saw this stuff in our traffic, has anybody detected the same ...?"
- enable ideas and resources to meet - "I had the idea to run this analysis, does anybody have real data available for that? Wanna collaborate ?" - " We have these data available, anybody willing to dig into ...? "
- include a TMA-focused wikipedia - gather educational material, lecture recordings, talks etc. - expected support by the industry
Other instruments Technical meetings, workshops - involve industry representatives (telcos, vendors)
Promotion of joint activities, visits, exchanges - special attention on young researchers
Training schools - conditioned to budget availability
Annual Reports - 1st one will serve as survey of state-of-art of EU TMA research
Relation to other projects There are several other projects in the TMA field -
MOME database perfSONAR by GÉANT2/JRA1 NoEs : EMANICS, EuroNGI FP6 : LOBSTER, ONELAB forthcoming FP7 projects: MOMENT (?), PRISM (???) ...
the Action will seek collaboration - serve as meta-initiative (e.g. through the TMA portal) - favour cross-project communication and dissemination of results - several key experts involved in those projects willing to participate to the Action
Support from industry Already expressed interest in participating - R&D departements of telcos - France Telecom R&D, Telefonica I+D, Portugal Telecom Inovacao, Deutsch Telekom Laboratories
- vendors - Thomson, Hitachi-Europe, Siemens, Kapsch CarrierCom, Tektronix, Endace
Once the Action is launched we expect attention by industry to increase even further
Organization/1 Chair, Vice-chair, Technical Secretary 3 Working Groups - vertical layering rather than topic-wise partitioning - to promote cross-topic fertilization and integration - each WG has own Steering Board
WG3 – Applications and practical exploitations WG2 – Traffic Measurement and Analysis WG1 – Monitoring and Data Collection Technologies
Organization/2 Task Forces - Editorial Task Force editorial production of Reports - Portal Task Force design, development and deployment of the TMA Portal
Focus Groups - flexible instrument, FG dynamically started / closed - small size : 2-4 participants - clear focused goal - e.g. carry on a joint work, resulting in a joint publication
- push young researchers to launch and lead new FG - can apply for funding support to the MC - e.g. for short-term scientific visits
Criticalities One critical point : large size - 22+1 countries, 70+ groups expressed already interest - including some industries
- large size is good to achieve critical mass - to give the sense of a "open EU community" ... rather than "yet another lobby"
- disadvantages - requires more management efforts - requires higher budget
Questions ?? ??
