Statistical inverse problems in active network tomography

TL;DR

This paper reviews inverse problems in active network tomography, focusing on estimating link-level QoS parameters like loss and delay from end-to-end data, with new results on delay inference and a real-world application.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of inverse problems in network tomography and introduces new parametric inference methods for delay distributions.

Findings

New parametric inference results for delay distributions

Review of recent research on loss rate and delay inference

Application to Internet telephony demonstrates practical relevance

Abstract

The analysis of computer and communication networks gives rise to some interesting inverse problems. This paper is concerned with active network tomography where the goal is to recover information about quality-of-service (QoS) parameters at the link level from aggregate data measured on end-to-end network paths. The estimation and monitoring of QoS parameters, such as loss rates and delays, are of considerable interest to network engineers and Internet service providers. The paper provides a review of the inverse problems and recent research on inference for loss rates and delay distributions. Some new results on parametric inference for delay distributions are also developed. In addition, a real application on Internet telephony is discussed.