Measurements of Control Plane Reliability and Performance

The control plane deals with how data traffic flows through a network from a source to a destination. It consists of routers and routing protocols – the latter are implemented by software processes running on routers, which communicate with one another to determine the path from the source to the destination. As a result, their performance and reliability form a cornerstone for the overall performance of the network, and monitoring their performance is crucial for service providers. This chapter focuses on control plane monitoring (also known as route monitoring) by describing (i) how data is collected from the routers’ control plane, (ii) how the data is used for various network management tasks including performance assessment, and (iii) how a case study of route monitors are realized in real life.