1 Performance Measurement and Management for Two-Level Optimization of Networks and Peer-to-Peer Applications J. Sventek § , L. Mathy † , D. Hutchison † , H. De Meer ‡ § University of Glasgow Department of Computing Science joe@dcs.gla.ac.uk † Lancaster University Computing Department {laurent, dh}@comp.lancs.ac.uk ‡ University College London Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering h.demeer@ee.ucl.ac.uk 1 Investigators’ Track Records University of Glasgow The Networked Systems Measurement and Control (NSMC) Group in the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, consists of 5 academics, 2 research associates and 8 research students. The department was rated 5 in RAE 2001. The group conducts research into architectures, models, algorithms, measurement, and control of networked/distributed systems. The group is especially interested in large-scale systems, based on both wireless and wireline interconnection technologies, as well as high-performance system interconnects. Prof. Joe Sventek obtained his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester and his PhD in Nuclear Chemistry from the University of California. He is currently the Professor of Communication Systems in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. Prior to joining Glasgow, he had a distinguished career pursuing research into networked and distributed systems and managing research teams at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1979- 1986), Hewlett-Packard (1987-1999), and Agilent Technologies (1999-2002). His research interests include programmable networks, embedded systems, closed-loop network management, and distributed system architectures. He has several publications on these topics, as well as holds four patents (with three other patents pending) in these particular areas. He has been the general chair for TINA99 and Middleware 2001, programme chair for COOTS98, TINA99, and Middleware 2000, and a member of programme committees too numerous to mention. He is an advisor to the TeleManagement Forum Board, is an adviser to the Wiley Series in Communications Networking and Distributed Systems, and was on the editorial board of the IEE/BCS/IOP Distributed System Engineering Journal. Professor Sventek led the Communications Solutions Department in Agilent Laboratories in a focused research programme of active measurements of IP-based network flows and using those measurements to drive proactive network management activities, such as "real-time" traffic re-engineering; this experience will be critical to the successful design and deployment of the network-level measurement system. Glasgow/NSMC is also a partner in a proposed EU 6th Framework STREP Project which is focused on embedding such active measurements of flows across broadband access networks onto the line cards of network elements for measuring flow QoS performance parameters. Lancaster University The Networking and Distributed Computing group is well known for its work on communications protocols and services, and in middleware developments, with a strong emphasis on Quality of Service (QoS) and on multimedia and multipeer applications. Lancaster University was a pioneer in the area of QoS architectures during the mid 1990s, and in more recent years has done leading edge work on multimedia caching, multimedia indexing and content management (MPEG- 7), IPv6 and mobility, and application level multicast and overlay networks. The Department has considerable support from the EPSRC (the UK national research council), from the European Commission, and directly from industry. Lancaster has a strong interest and a long history in the design and implementation of programmable network devices. Indeed, the group has been responsible for the design of three programmable router architectures, namely LARA [1] (Linux kernel-based programmability), LANode (combination of application-level and network-level programmability - http://www.activenet.lancs.ac.uk/lanode), and LARA++ (network programmability in Windows 2000 - http://www.landmarc.net/people/stefan/LARA++.ps). In the Alpine project (funded by BTExact), Lancaster was concerned with the design, using application-level active networking techniques (ALAN), of a scalable distributed algorithm for the control and self-organising maintenance of application-level overlay networks. Dr. Laurent Mathy is a Lecturer in the Computing Department at Lancaster University. He spent the 1995-1996 academic year at the Center for Integrated Computer Systems Research (CICSR), the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, as a visiting scholar. He also was a research engineer in the Research Unit in Networking (RUN) of