1st International ICST Conference on Wireless Internet

Research Article

Large-scale RTT measurements from an operational UMTS/GPRS network

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/WICON.2005.19,
        author={Francesco  Vacirca and Rene Pilz  and Fabio Ricciato},
        title={Large-scale RTT measurements from an operational UMTS/GPRS network},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Wireless Internet},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={WICON},
        year={2005},
        month={9},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/WICON.2005.19}
    }
    
  • Francesco Vacirca
    Rene Pilz
    Fabio Ricciato
    Year: 2005
    Large-scale RTT measurements from an operational UMTS/GPRS network
    WICON
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/WICON.2005.19
Francesco Vacirca1, Rene Pilz 1, Fabio Ricciato1
  • 1: Telecommunications Research Center Vienna, AT

Abstract

In this paper we present some observations about TCP RTT as captured in the live traffic of an operational GPRS/UMTS network. RTT samples are extracted from traces collected by passive monitoring the Gn interfaces of one of the major providers in Austria, EU. We compare results for GPRS and UMTS, and expose some methodological issues involved in performing this type of analysis, for instance the potential bias introduced by heavy users. We also explore the correlation of RTT with time-of-day. The primary motivation for this research is to gain a better understanding of the dominant causes that shape the behaviour and the distribution of RTT across the TCP connections that populate a GPRS/UMTS network. The results presented here are useful for the scientific community, for instance to set more realistic simulation scenarios for other research activities. In addition, RTT measurements as obtained by large-scale passive monitoring can be used in combination with other indicators to build a summary indicator of the performances experienced by the TCP users at the scale of the whole network, i.e. a global RTT-based KPI (key performance indicator).