ANN ARBOR—There might be new hope for tracking down delays and traffic jams on the worldwide Internet. Merit Network, Inc. has received a $1.6 million award from the National Science Foundation to study Internet performance. The three-year grant was awarded to Merit’s and the University of Michigan’s Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis project (IPMA).

The project will develop technologies and deploy probe machines across the Internet to help monitor performance and track down network brown-outs and outages. The project is a joint effort between Merit, a pioneer in internetworking, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the U-M College of Engineering.

The rapid growth of the Internet has left telephone companies and Internet service providers scrambling to meet demand, IPMA officials noted. “Often, the pace of growth and new complexity at the heart of the network make it extremely difficult to uncover problems. The IPMA project hopes to help providers add gauges and monitors to the internal ‘plumbing’ of the network. These tools will help pinpoint traffic bottlenecks and serve as early warnings of network problems.”

IPMA’s tools, to be available on the World Wide Web, are primarily designed for network operators, but they will also help ordinary users visualize the ups and downs of network traffic over the course of a day, a week, or several months. Some of the tools under development include: NetNow, which measures loss and delay inside a service provider’s backbone, ASExplorer, which visualizes the stability of “core” sections of the Internet, and IPN, which tracks provider outages and downtime.

The project highlights Merit’s continuing role in designing, building, and operating the global Internet. Between 1987 and 1995, Merit was the lead partner in re-engineering and managing the NSFNET Backbone Service, the precursor to today’s Internet, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, ANS, IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan.

According to IPMA project director Farnam Jahanian, a professor in U-M’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, “it’s a tremendous opportunity for us—a chance to use the tools we’re developing to study the impact of growth and change on the network.” The Internet has experienced explosive growth in both size and topological complexity. Today’s Internet is so complex, in fact, that it is difficult to get an overall view of network performance. “One of IPMA’s goals,” Jahanian continued, “is to collect data on traffic patterns that are common to many parts of the network. That information will significantly advance academic and industry efforts to develop new solutions for high-speed networking.”

David Staudt, an NSF Program Officer in the NSFNET Program, called the new project “crucial for our understanding of what’s around the corner for all of us who depend so heavily on the Internet. The IPMA research will make it possible for engineers to get immediate Web feedback on network capacity—data that will help them fine-tune the technology we’ll need to run tomorrow’s networks.”

Merit President Eric Aupperle said that “with a better understanding of how the Internet performs day-to-day, we’ll have a much firmer basis for integrating new tools and technologies as they emerge in the United States and worldwide.”

The IPMA project maintains close ties with major Internet Service Providers such as MCI and AOL, as well as with leading vendors of Internet hardware and software, to share applications of new technology. The project also works closely with CAIDA, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, and the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR), to create a shared measurement infrastructure for the U.S. Internet.

Results gained from the IPMA project will go a long way towards ensuring that the nation’s next-generation Internet, known as Internet2, has the capacity to meet the needs of future researchers. Gearing up to run at speeds up to 100 times faster than the current Internet, Internet2 brings together more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities, plus government and industry, to plan future support for vital technologies such as environmental monitoring and remote health care.

Background on Merit Network, Inc., MichNet and the U-M’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Merit Network, Inc., is one of the nation’s leading organizations for computer networking and communications. A non-profit corporation with offices in Ann Arbor, Merit offers more than 30 years’ experience in developing, deploying, and operating data networks at local, state, national, and international levels. Merit’s engineering staff has received international acclaim for its work in building networks, designing protocols, and creating standards for the Internet. Merit has current contracts with the National Science Foundation and with business and industry groups for projects ranging from routing and network management to remote access.

Merit was founded in 1966, when Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan established a non-profit corporation to interconnect computers on the three campuses. The corporation is now owned by 12 of Michigan’s four-year publicly supported universities.

MichNet, the regional network operated by Merit Network, Inc., pioneered Internet connectivity in Michigan and provides the largest Internet infrastructure in the state. MichNet pre-dates any other network of its kind by more than a decade, and has earned recognition for leading edge installations, technical innovation, reliability, and service. More than 500 Michigan organizations in government, education, health care, business, industry, and the arts are attached to the Internet through MichNet.

The University of Michigan Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department is one of the leading departments in the nation, with a diverse program of study, 100 faculty members, 800 undergraduates, and 650 graduate students. EECS programs at Michigan encompass a wide spectrum of research areas, including hardware and software systems, computer networks, control and communication systems, wireless networks, artificial intelligence, VLSI, solid-state electronics, and optical science. The EECS Department is the home for a number of national centers of excellence and multi-disciplinary research programs, and more than a dozen research laboratories. The IPMA research effort will be conducted by faculty and students affiliated with the EECS Software Systems Research Lab and Real-Time Computing Lab.

Related Links:

• Farnam Jahanian
• IPMA Project