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From: mogul@wrl.dec.com (Jeffrey Mogul)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: 9 interesting & challenging problems for Netman
Message-ID: <1990Oct5.012319.4609@wrl.dec.com>
Date: 5 Oct 90 01:23:19 GMT
References: <9009210641.AA20321@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
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In article <9009210641.AA20321@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) writes:
>1. given the trace of packets between two end points on a LAN,
>and a FSM, petri net, lotos/csp/ccs/Estelle spec for the protocol,
>detect protocol (elements of procedure) errors. (easier, do the same
>given ASN or XDR for packet formats:-)
>
>2. Given same data, automatically ascribe performance problems 
>to incorrect packet size, timeout, window etc...
>
This is similar to research reported on by Bruce L. Hitson in
"Knowledge-Based Monitoring and Control: An Approach to Understanding
the Behavior of TCP/IP Network Protocols", Proc. SIGCOMM '88.

This was a rule-based system, not a "specification-based" system,
but perhaps that is not such a big difference.

>4. Find a good way to visualise the "closeness" of hosts based on the
>frequency with which they communicate (this is non-trivial)
>
>5. Automatically draw a "tube" map (friendly/Metro) of the net given 
>the topography...

Jon sent his message before he attended SIGCOMM '90 last week, where
I gave a paper that touched on this topic.  This is "work in progress"
so it will be a while before I can publish a detailed paper.

>7. Interpret auto-correllation between packets from/to and/or
>same src/dst in a sensible fashion...

I suppose this depends on one's definition of "sensible", but I've
seen a few papers on this.  For example, Mark J. Lorence and M.
Satyanarayanan, "IPwatch: A Tool For Monitoring Network Locality",
Operating Systems Review 24:1 (January 1990).

These all seem to be fertile areas for research, as Jon has pointed out.

-Jeff