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SUMMARY:Towards a Network Measurement Science - Don Towsley\, UMass
DTSTART:20090630T130000Z
DTEND:20090630T140000Z
UID:TALK19002@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Microsoft Research Cambridge Talks Admins
DESCRIPTION:*Abstract* Network measuremnts these days are conducted in a m
 ostly ad hoc manner. \nUsers quite often perform one-time measurement expe
 riments in an unprincipled approach\, in many case leading to inefficient 
 measurements and\, even worse\, biased measurements.  Vendors have develop
 ed and standardized a number of measurement tools\, e.g.\, NetFlow from Ci
 sco. \nHowever\, these tools are typically inefficient in that they often 
 yield statistics with large error ranges.\n\nIn this talk we argue for the
  need for a network measurement science that ccan deal in a principled way
  with the issues of measurement efficiency and measurement bias.  To deal 
 with measurement efficiency\, we advocate the use of Fisher information du
 ring the design of measurment experiments and measurement tools.  Briefly\
 , Fisher information is a measure of the anount of information that a sing
 le measurment provides to the computation of a statistic such as loss rate
 . \nWe illustrate its application to the problem of estimating flow size d
 istribution based on packet sampling as found in NetFlow.  In the context 
 of measurement bias\, we shift our attention to measurements leading to th
 e characterization of graphs as commonly found in the Internet and on-line
  social networks. We review several flawed studies where the measurements 
 were biased and then describe how measurements based on random walks throu
 gh graphs can be used to remedy these deficiencies.\n\n*Biography* I am a 
 Professor in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts.  My inte
 rests lie in the area of modelling and analysis of computer and communicat
 ion systems.  I have been visiting MSR for the past couple of months.  You
  can find more information about me here\, http://www-net.cs.umass.edu/per
 sonnel/towsley.html.
LOCATION:Small public lecture room\, Microsoft Research Ltd\, 7 J J Thomso
 n Avenue (Off Madingley Road)\, Cambridge
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