skip to main content
10.1145/505202.505232acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesimcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Charging from sampled network usage

Published: 01 November 2001 Publication History

Abstract

IP flows have heavy-tailed packet and byte size distributions. This make them poor candidates for uniform sampling---i.e. selecting 1 in N flows---since omission or inclusion of a large flow can have a large effect on estimated total traffic. Flows selected in this manner are thus unsuitable for use in usage sensitive billing. We propose instead using a size-dependent sampling scheme which gives priority to the larger contributions to customer usage. This turns the heavy tails to our advantage; we can obtain accurate estimates of customer usage from a relatively small number of important samples.The sampling scheme allows us to control error when charging is sensitive to estimated usage only above a given base level. A refinement allows us to strictly limit the chance that a customers estimated usage will exceed their actual usage. Furthermore, we show that a secondary goal, that of controlling the rate at which samples are produced, can be fulfilled provided the billing cycle is sufficiently long. All these claims are supported by experiments on flow traces gathered from a commercial network.

References

[1]
J. Apisdorf, K. Claffy, K. Thompson, and R. Wilder, "OC3MON: Flexible, Affordable, High Performance Statistics Collection," For further information see http://www.nlanr.net/NAIOc3mon
[2]
R. CBceres, N.G. Duffield, A. Feldmann, J. Friedmann, A. Greenberg, R. Greer, T. Johnson, C. Kalmanek, B. Krishnamurthy, D. Lavelle, P.P. Mishra, K.K. Ramakrishnan, J. Rexford, F. True, and J.E. van der Merwe, "Measurement and Analysis of IP Network Usage and Behavior", IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 144-151, May 2000.
[3]
Cisco Systems, Inc., "NetFlow"; for further information see: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732lnetflowlindex.html and http:liwww.cisco.comnivercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios120/ 120newft/1201imit/12Os/l2Osll/l2s-sanf.htm
[4]
Cisco NetFlow Services and Applications Customer Profiles. See http:iiwww.cisco.comiwarp/public/cc/pd/iosw/ioft/neflct/profiles/
[5]
K.C. Claffy, H.-W. Braun, and G.C. Polyzos. Parameterizable methodology for internet traffic flow profiling. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 13(8):1481-1494, October 1995.
[6]
Kimberly C. Claffy, George C. Polyzos, and Hans-Werner Braun. Application of Sampling Methodologies to Network Traffic Characterization. Computer Communication Review, 23(4): 194-203, October 1993, appeared in Proceedings ACM SIGCOMM'93, San Francisco, CA, September 13-17, 1993.
[7]
N.G. Duffield, C. Lund, M. Thorup, Learn more, sample less: control of volume and variance in network measurement, Submitted for publication, 2001.
[8]
A. Feldmann, J. Rexford, and R. CBceres, "Efficient Policies for Carrying Web Traffic over Flow-Switched Networks," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 6, no.6, pp. 673-685, December 1998.
[9]
Inmon Corporation, "sFlow accuracy and billing", see: http://www.inmon.com/PDF/sFlowBilling.pdf
[10]
"Internet Protocol Flow export" (IPFX). IETF Working Group. See: http://net.doit.wisc.edu/ipfxl
[11]
Level 3 Communications, Inc., "Crossroads Internet Access", see: http://www.level3.com/us/services/crossroads/
[12]
J. K. MacKie-Mason and H. R. Varian. Pricing Congestable Network Resources. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 13(7):1141-1149, September 1995.
[13]
A. M. Odlyzko, Paris Metro Pricing for the Internet, Proc. ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'99), ACM, 1999, pp. 140-147.
[14]
V. Paxson, G. Almes, J. Mahdavi, M. Mathis, "Framework for IP Performance Metrics", RFC 2330, available from: ftp://ftp.isi.edulin-notes/rfc2330,txt, May 1998.
[15]
Qosient, LLC, "Argus", see: http://www.qosient.comlargus/index.htm
[16]
Real Time Flow Measurement, see: http://www.auckland.ac.nz/net/Internet/rtfm/.
[17]
Riverstone Networks, Inc., see: http://www.riverstonenet.com/technology/
[18]
W. Shewhart, "Statistical method from the viewpoint of quality control", Dover, New York, 1939.
[19]
Sprint Corporation, "ION". See http://ion.sprint.com
[20]
XACCT Technologies, Inc., see: http://www.xacct.com

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
IMW '01: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Internet measurement
November 2001
319 pages
ISBN:1581134355
DOI:10.1145/505202
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 November 2001

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

SIGCOMM WS'01
Sponsor:
SIGCOMM WS'01: ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Workshop 2001
November 1 - 2, 2001
California, San Francisco, USA

Acceptance Rates

IMW '01 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 80 submissions, 36%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 29 of 80 submissions, 36%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)9
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 01 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media