TCP Packet Trace Analysis

Abstract

Examination of a trace of packets collected from the network is often the only method available for diagnosing protocol performance problems in computer networks. This thesis explores the use of packet traces to diagnose performance problems of the transport protocol TCP. Unfortunately, manual examination of these traces can be so tedious that effective analysis is not possible. The primary contribution of this thesis is a graphical method of displaying the packet trace which greatly reduce, the tediousness of examining a packet trace. The graphical method is demonstrated by the examination of some packet traces of typical TCP connections. The performance of two different implementations of TCP sending data across a particular network path is compared. Traces many thousands of packets long are used to demonstrate how effectively the graphical method simplifies examination of long complicated traces. In the comparison of the two TCP implementations, the burstiness of the TCP transmitter appeared to be related to the achieved throughput. A method of quantifying this burstiness is presented and its possible relevance to understanding the performance of TCP is discussed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA233472

Entities

People

  • Timothy J. Shepard

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Classification
  • Computer Communications
  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Transmission
  • Digital Communications
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Local Area Networks
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Science
  • Operating Systems
  • Packet Loss
  • Standards
  • Transport Protocols

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Systems Analysis and Design