1st International ICST Conference on Multimedia Services Access Networks

Research Article

Empirical Evaluation of Upstream Throughput in a DOCSIS Access Network

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/MSAN.2005.1489952,
        author={Swapnil Bhatia and Radim  Bartos and Chaitanya  Godsay},
        title={Empirical Evaluation of Upstream Throughput in a DOCSIS Access Network},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Multimedia Services Access Networks},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={MSAN},
        year={2005},
        month={8},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/MSAN.2005.1489952}
    }
    
  • Swapnil Bhatia
    Radim Bartos
    Chaitanya Godsay
    Year: 2005
    Empirical Evaluation of Upstream Throughput in a DOCSIS Access Network
    MSAN
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/MSAN.2005.1489952
Swapnil Bhatia1,2,3,*, Radim Bartos1,2,3,*, Chaitanya Godsay1,2,3,*
  • 1: Department of Computer Science
  • 2: University of New Hampshire
  • 3: Durham, NH 03824, USA
*Contact email: sbhatia@cs.unh.edu, rbartos@cs.unh.edu, cgodsay@cs.unh.edu

Abstract

We present empirical measurements of the upstream throughput of a DOCSIS1 1.1 link. In contrast to all previous simulation-based studies, our measurements have been obtained from actual cable-modems (CMs) and head-ends, both from two different vendors each. We have constructed an exhaustive database of measurements of a large subset of the space of parameters affecting upstream throughput. Using a wellknown non-parametric hypothesis test, we query this database for obtaining statistically robust answers to key questions about the effect of parameter changes on the throughput. Our results indicate that for a single CM scenario, packet concatenation is most effective whereas piggybacking is effective and better than concatenation only in some cases. Using both enhancers decreases throughput for a single CM scenario. Our results are robust across head-end implementations and are of immediate interest to network and protocol architects as well as device developers.