The ETOMIC Active Probing Infrastructure – Demo Proposal Istv´ an Csabai, P´ eter H´ aga * , G´ abor Simon, J´ ozsef St´ eger and G´ abor Vattay Dept. of Physics of Complex Systems, E¨ otv¨ os University, Budapest, Hungary {csabai,haga,simon,steger,vattay}@complex.elte.hu Eduardo Maga˜ na, Daniel Morat´ o, Mikel Izal and Javier Aracil Departamento Autom´ atica y Computaci´ on Universidad P´ ublica de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain {eduardo.magana,daniel.morato,mikel.izal,javier.aracil}@unavarra.es Abstract— ETOMIC (www.etomic.org) is a European Union sponsored effort, that aims at providing a Paneuropean traffic measurement infrastructure. This infrastructure contains 15 PC based active probing nodes equipped with high-precision, sending capable DAG cards and GPS receivers to achieve time synchronization. Such cards are specifically designed to transmit packet trains with strict timing, in the range of nanoseconds. Every kind of active probing techniques can be applied on the nodes, from the quite simple ping application to the complex network tomography methods which are based on the synchro- nized sending capability of the DAG cards. The measurement nodes are centrally managed via a web platform, where the new arbitrary measurement jobs can be uploaded to and handled. The management system schedules the jobs and does the maintenance tasks. Now, the infrastructure is opened to the networking community. This paper describes the node architectures, the management system, and the proposed conference demonstration. I. I NTRODUCTION AND SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Internet traffic is growing at an extraordinary pace and as a consequence, traffic control and forecasting are becom- ing fundamental issues for network operators. The ETOMIC (European Traffic Observatory Measurement InfrastruCture) project is especially focused on realizing a Paneuropean mea- surement infrastructure, consisting measurement nodes which are deployed at selected European locations. ETOMIC is targeted to provide the scientific community with a measurement platform that is i) fully open and re- configurable and ii) extremely accurate (nanoseconds) and GPS-synchronized. ETOMIC has been designed to allow re- searchers to perform any kind of measurement experiments. To do so, researchers are provided with an interface from which software upload to the measurement nodes is possible. A choice of measurement scripts are also provided, that cover the most popular measurement techniques (packet pairs, etc). Researchers may also provide their own code for the exper- iments, that will be automatically compiled by the ETOMIC management system. The node reservation can be performed through the web-based user interface, while the ETOMIC management kernel takes care of the software upload and experiment execution in a fully automated fashion. ETOMIC is a high-precision infrastructure, due to the fact that Endace DAG cards are incorporated into the nodes. Such cards are specifically designed to transmit packet trains with strict timing, in the range of nanoseconds. Actually, the DAG card transmit code has been specifically modified to serve the ETOMIC requirements. Furthermore, a GPS is also incorporated into the measurement nodes, so that the whole measurement infrastructure is synchronized to the same reference clock. researcher CMS ETOMIC node ETOMIC node ETOMIC node ETOMIC node Fig. 1. Schematic of the ETOMIC infrastructure The system components are depicted in figure 1. A central management system (CMS) is in charge of system control, comprising not only the scheduling and execution of mea- surements experiments, but also system monitoring (surviv- ability) and configuration. The central management system is composed of a server and a traffic repository to which measurements can be downloaded to for subsequent pro- cessing. The software running in the management system is called the management kernel. On the other hand, researchers interact with the management system through the user inter- face and account database. ETOMIC provides an account to any registered researcher, so that they can upload software and download measurement results. Finally, the interface also serves the system manager to enter configuration data about the measurement nodes and researcher accounts. ETOMIC is not the only one measurement infrastructure that is currently available in the state of the art, which includes