DipZoom: An Internet Measurements Marketplace
Michael Rabinovich, CWRU


Short Abstract:

We describe DipZoom (for ``Deep Internet Performance Zoom''), an
approach to provide focused, on-demand Internet measurements.
Unlike existing approaches that face a difficult challenge of
building a measurement platform with sufficiently diverse
measurements and measuring hosts, DipZoom
offers a matchmaking  service instead, which uses P2P concepts to
bring together experimenters in need of measurements with external
measurement providers.  It then harnesses market forces to orchestrate
the supply and demand sides in the resulting open eco-system.

Long Abstract:

Internet measurements drive improvements in Internet infrastructure
and provide the foundation for the Internet  performance
research. Thus, the availability and quality of measurements is of
fundamental importance to continued   progress in these areas. There
have been a number of research projects that collect general Internet
measurements,  and then answer specific measurement requests by
estimating the requested values from the collected generic data.  At
the same time, a need often arizes for an on-demand measurement of a
certain feature. For example, companies  often need to know the
performance of their Web sites from the perspective of specific client
populations. While some  research platforms (e.g., Scriptroute
deployed on PlanetLab) and, commercially, Keynote Systems offer
measuring  hosts to serve this need, they can provide only a limited
number of measuring hosts, and a limited choice of measurement types
and modes. Indeed, Scriptroute can only provide measurements from the
PlantLab nodes, which are  not representative of clients typical
connectivity. Keynote attempts to select representative location and
connectivity  of their measuring hosts, yet even Keynote has presense
in only 50 cities worldwide. It is clearly not feasible for a single
platform to provide a representative sample of the entire
Internet. Furthermore, a limited number of well-known  measuring
locations allows companies being measured to game the system, by
optimizing specifically for those  locations.

In this talk, I will describe our ongoing project that explores a new
approach to provide on-demand measurements. This approach, which
we call DipZoom (for Deep Internet Performance Zoom), is based on two
key ideas. First, rather than trying to build a global-scale measuring
platform, we propose a matchmaking service between the experimenters
in need of measurements and external measurement providers. Thus,
DipZoom facilitates a peer-to-peer network of measurement
providers and requesters, and it uses ideas from file-sharing P2P
networks in its service discovery. Second, DipZoom will use a market
approach as an effective regulator of system behavior without rigid
built-in control mechanisms.  Together, these two ideas would create a
marketplace for Internet measurements: an open ecosystem where anyone
can offer measurements from their computers and other computing
devices, and anyone can request measurements.  Our hope is that the
combination of an open peer-to-peer network with market forces will
encourage innovation  and diversity in the offered measurements and
measuring devices. Such a system would significantly enhance our
ability to gain insight into Internet characteristics, enable
companies to optimize and monitor their Internet sites for  focused
client populations, and would make gaming the system infeasible due to
the number of potential measuring  hosts.