Title: BU/NSF Workshop on Internet Measurement Instrumentation and Characterization 

Authors: Azer Bestavros, John Byers, and Mark Crovella (PIs and co-organizers) 
         Paul Barford, Ibrahim Matta, and Michael Mitzenmacher (co-organizers)

Date: December 15, 1999

Abstract:

Because of its growth in size, scope, and complexity---as well as its
increasingly central role in society---the Internet has become an
important object of study and evaluation. Many significant innovations
in the networking community in recent years have been directed at
obtaining a more accurate understanding of the fundamental behavior of
the complex system that is the Internet. These innovations have come
in the form of better models of components of the system, better tools
which enable us to measure the performance of the system more
accurately, and new techniques coupled with performance evaluation
which have delivered better system utilization. The continued
development and improvement of our understanding of the properties of
the Internet is essential to guide designers of hardware, protocols,
and applications for the next decade of Internet growth.

  As a research community, an important next step involves an
comprehensive look at the challenges that lie ahead in this area. This
includes an an evaluation of both the current unsolved challenges and
the upcoming challenges the Internet will present us with in the near
future, and a discussion of the promising new techniques that
innovators in the field are currently developing. To this end, the
Networking Research Group at Boston University, with support from the
National Science Foundation, organized a one-day workshop which was
held at Boston University on Monday, August 30, 1999. This report
summarizes the technical presentations and discussions that took place
during that workshop.