Design, Measurement and Management of Large-Scale IP Networks Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

Sets out the design and management principles of large-scale IP networks by weaving together theory and practice.

Designing efficient IP networks and maintaining them effectively poses a range of challenges, but in this highly competitive industry it is crucial that these are overcome. Weaving together theory and practice, this text sets out the design and management principles of large-scale IP networks, and the need for these tasks to be underpinned by actual measurements. Discussions of the types of measurements available in IP networks are included, along with the ways in which they can assist both in the design phase as well as in the monitoring and management of IP applications. Other topics covered include IP network design, traffic engineering, network and service management and security. A valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in electrical and computer engineering and computer science, this is also an excellent reference for network designers and operators in the communication industry.

1. Introduction; 2. Background and context; Part I. Network Monitoring and Management: 3. The need for monitoring in ISP network design and management; 4. Understanding through-router delay; 5. Traffic matrices: measurement, inference and modeling; Part II. Network Design and Traffic Engineering: 6. Principles of network design and traffic engineering; 7. Topology design resilient to long-lived failures; 8. Achieving topology resilience using multi-parallel links; 9. Performance enhancement and resilience to short-lived failures via routing optimization; 10. Measuring the shared fate of IGP engineering: considerations and takeaway; 11. Capacity planning; Part III. From Bits to Services: 12. From bits to services: information is power; 13. Traffic classification in the dark; 14. Classification of multimedia hybrid flows in real time; 15. Detection of data place malware: DoS and computer worms; 16. Detection of control place anomalies: beyond prefix hijacking; Appendix A. How to link original and measured flow characteristics when packet sampling is used: bytes, packets and flows; Appendix B. Application specific payload bit strings; Appendix C. BLINC implementation details; Appendix D. Validation of direction-conforming rule.

Weaving together theory and practice, this text sets out the design and management principles of large-scale IP networks, and the need for these tasks to be underpinned by actual measurements. This is a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, as well as for practitioners in the communication industry.

Antonio Nucci is the Chief Technology Officer at Narus Inc., and gained his Ph.D. in Communication Networks from Politecnico di Torino, Italy in 2003. He was awarded the prestigious Infoworld CTO Top 25 in 2007 for his vision and leadership within Narus and the IT community, and his research interests include network measurement and management, traffic analysis, network security and surveillance, network design, and traffic engineering.
Konstantina Papagiannaki is Senior Research Scientist at Intel Research, Pittsburgh, and was awarded her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College London, UK, in 2003. Her research interests include network design and planning for wired and wireless networks, network measurement, and security.