On time-stamp accuracy of passive monitoring in a container execution environment
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Moradi, Farnaz; Flinta, Christofer; Johnsson, Andreas; Meirosu, Catalin
- Source
- 2016 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops, 2016. :117-125 May, 2016
- Subject
- Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Monitoring
Containers
Virtualization
Switches
Loss measurement
Ports (Computers)
- Language
Passive monitoring of network performance parameters is experiencing a revival due to widespread adoption of virtualization and software-based implementation of network functions. Timestamping is one of the most challenging operations needed for passively monitoring network traffic performance parameters such as latency and jitter. We develop a setup whereby functions that monitor the network traffic are deployed in monitoring containers adjacently to, and interconnected through a virtual switch with the monitored Virtual Network Function instance. In this scenario, we evaluate the effects of container virtualization and virtual switch mirroring of traffic on the measurement of latency. The evaluation results indicate very low measurement errors (a few microseconds in our testbed) which are consistent over different measurement scenarios, thus validating the feasibility of this technique for passively monitoring latency.