[WLANware] GSoC 2011 - Active and Passive Measurements

[Michael Bredel]

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Hi *,

a colleague and I are very interested in joining your project for the
GSoC this year. We are both Ph.D. students at the Institute of
Communications Technology, Leibniz Universität Hannover, doing
research in the field of network performance analysis. Hence, we have
an in deep knowledge of active and passive measurement methods
especially for wireless networks including IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16.

Furthermore, we have worked on OpenWrt already. At our institute, we
installed a wireless testbed, that, among other components, comprises
10 wireless access points based on full featured Gateworks Laguna
Platforms running OpenWrt. Each platform is equipped with two 802.11n
wireless network interfaces and a low cost Wi-Spy spectrum analyzer
that can be used to passively gather additional information of the
wireless system. We adapted the Bootloader (U-Boot) of the platform
and ported some software such as Rude/Crude, Cfengine2, and SystemTap
to run under OpenWrt according to our needs. Thus, we have gained lot
of experience on the internal structure of OpenWrt and its packaging
system respectively.

At your ideas-page you mentioned active and passive measurements and
porting OpenIMP to OpenWrt and we believe that this is somethin we
can contribute. Since we are two persons we would like to propose
two projects that are, however, connected somehow.

The first project would be porting, packaging, and testing OpenIMP for
OpenWrt as described at your homepage. This, of course, includes
documentation and a working prototype on our testbed. Related
deliverables are the OpenIMP probe package as well as related
packages, like the IPFIX-library, for OpenWrt, OpenIMP Server packages
for e.g. Ubuntu, a detailed documentation or a homepage, etc.

Since OpenIMP only includes measurement techniques designed for wired
networks, such as ping statistics, or, optionally, PathChirp, that are
not applicable to wireless system, the second project will improve the
existing OpenIMP functionalities by integrating additional measurement
techniques that can be used in wireless networks as well. Related
deliverables are e.g. a DietTOPP-package, a Spruce-package, a package
regarding the spectrum analyzers, as well as the integration part.

In addition, we can provide a method for passive available bandwidth
estimation out of packet traces, that, today, only works offline.
However, it will be beneficial to integrate such a method for online
monitoring which can be done using the OpenIMP framework.

So, what do you people think about these proposals? Do you have any
comments, suggestions, further ideas? We would be very glad to get
some feedback. Furthermore, it would be great to get in touch with the
mentor of this project to further discuss our ideas, the project
schedule, possible deliverables, etc.

Thank you very much and kind regards,
Michael + Christoph
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