Inferring Queue Size by Active Measurement

Please help us with our active measurement networking experiment by following the appropriate directions for your OS. Feel free to send this to friends that might get a kick out of it or to try it out on different ISPs that you might have access to. However, please do not run this experiment on the WPI LAN, we are interested in commercial Internet access only. Any questions email us at jnick at cs.wpi.edu and claypool at cs.wpi.edu.

Thanks!

WPI Congestion Control Research Group

1. Open a command prompt
2. Type "ipconfig /all"
3. Find the line that says, "DNS Severs........", copy the first name/address listed.
   On most Windows systems to copy, highlight the name/address with the mouse and press "Enter"
4. Type "ping -t (results of step 3) >> output.txt", then wait 10 seconds.
   You can either press the right mouse button to paste the name/address you copied in step 3, or manually enter it.
   examples:
   • ping -t 130.215.36.18 >> output.txt
   • ping -t ns.wpi.edu >> output.txt
5. Open up an Internet Explorer window
6. Download this http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~jnick/viper.tar by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save target as..."
   Make sure that the download window will stay open when the download completes by un-checking the appropriate box
7. Switch back to command prompt window, press Control-C to stop ping
8. Report back via email to jnick at cs.wpi.edu and claypool cs.wpi.edu the following stats:
   • The name of your ISP, with adverstised line speed and type
     example: Verizon, 768 Kbps, DSL
   • Operating System type, if you don't know, you can right click on the "My Computer" icon and then go down to "Properties". You should see the information on the first panel.
     example: Windows XP
   • CPU and Memory, if you don't know you can right click on the "My Computer" icon and then go down to "Properties". You should see the information on the first panel.
     example: Pentium-3 733 MHz, 256 MB RAM
   • Wireless or Wired (if your PC is using a wireless network card to your DSL gateway then you'd respond "Wireless" else you'd respond "Wired")
   • Amount of time to download the file, from step 6
     example: 1:25 seconds
   • Bandwidth as reported by internet explorer, also from step 6
     example: 88 KB/s
9. Repeat steps 4-8 (2) additional times, appending the results into the same email. After the 3 runs of the experiment attach output.txt (created in step 4) to the email.

1. Open a shell
2. Type "cat /etc/resolv.conf"
3. Copy the first IP address/name listed (after the words "nameserver")
   Usually to copy text you just need to highlight it with the mouse.
4. Type "ping (results of step 3) >> output.txt", then wait 10 seconds
   You can paste the name/address by clicking the middle mouse button, or enter it manually.
   examples:
   • ping 130.215.36.18 >> output.txt
   • ping ns.wpi.edu >> output.txt
5. Open another shell, or web browswer
6. Download this file: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~jnick/viper.tar.
   Use the command line utility "WGET", included with most Linux distributions.
   If you don't have it, go to http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html and download it.
   You might want to keep it when done, as WGET is a pretty useful tool to have.
7. Switch back to shell running ping, press Control-C to stop pinging
8. Report back via email to jnick at cs.wpi.edu and claypool at cs.wpi.edu the following stats:
   • The name of your ISP, with adverstised line speed and type
     example: Verizon, 768 Kbps, DSL
   • Operating System distribution (and kernel version if you know it)
   • CPU and Memory, you can find the information by typing "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and "cat /proc/meminfo". You can just email us what is printed out of those files, if it easier.
     example: Pentium-3 733 MHz, 256 MB RAM
   • Wireless or Wired (if your PC is using a wireless network card to your DSL gateway then you'd respond "Wireless" else you'd respond "Wired")
   • Amount of time to download the file, from step 6
     example: 1:25 seconds
   • Bandwidth as reported by your download application, also from step 6
     example: 88 KB/s
9. Repeat steps 4-8 (2) additional times, appending the results into the same email. After the 3 runs of the experiment attach output.txt (created in step 4) to the email.