A study on network performance metrics and their composition

Purpose – Research backbone networks like GEANT2 and the national research and education networks are used by a variety of scientists and research projects. These users and the network engineers operating the networks would like to get access to network performance metrics to optimise their use of the network and to troubleshoot performance degradations when they happen. A variety of tools for performing network measurements already exist, and the perfSONAR architecture developed in the Joint Research Activity 1 (JRA1) of GEANT2 aims at integrating them into a coherent framework. However, a harmonised definition of the most interesting metrics and how measurements must be carried out is still lacking.Design/methodology/approach – This paper suggests some of the elementary metrics which are relevant for assessing network performance, along with an indication about how to post‐process (or “transform”, or “compose”) them in order to obtain derived summary values that can quickly and intuitively give an indic...