Sponsors CAIDA SDSC ACM Cisco NSF

CAIDA Traffic Analysis Teaching CD

Welcome to the first edition of the CAIDA Traffic Analysis CD!

This CD is intended to be a resource to aid the teaching of Traffic Analysis and Networking in general. On this CD we have collected a number of resources produced by CAIDA including network analysis software, packet traces, animations, documentation, readings, tutorials and class exercises. We hope collecting these resources together and making them available to instructors will stimulate the teaching of internetworking, especially the measurement and analysis of network traffic.

The CD contains the following components

• Overview
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to Traffic Analysis
• CoralReef
• Traffic Analysis Tutorial Exercises
• Readings
• Sample Packet Header Traces

We hope to further develop this CD over time. Our plans for the next edition include more exercises and a selection of partially analysed traces. Your comments and suggestions would be appreciated. We would also be very grateful for a short note letting us know that you are using the CD in some way.

Thank you for your interest in the CD.

k claffy
Nevil Brownlee
Tony McGregor
learncoral@caida.org

Overview

CAIDA was established in late 1997 with seed funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Having NSF complement an industry-focused effort with government support promotes balance among the needs of the various communities (private, research, government, and users) and facilitate the near term development and deployment of critical measurement technology and techniques.

In discussions with ISPs, CAIDA discovered a serious deficit of comprehensively trained Internet engineering personnel. ISPs simply can not find adequately trained staff. In order to fill this void, CAIDA, in collaboration with widely known Internet guru Professor Evi Nemeth, began gathering resources to assist in the education of future Internet engineers. This effort, dubbed the Internet Engineering Curriculum (IEC), provides contemporary tools to university faculty to supplement traditional teaching methods. CAIDA's IEC Traffic Analysis CD is the first in a collection of real-world examples with exercises, tutorials and presentations designed for university level study. This CD is intended to supplement current teaching materials used by university faculty.

Introduction to Traffic Analysis

• A presentation describing some of the most common Internet measurement questions and how to answer them: "Metrics and Methodologies"
  
• An animation of the process of one of the most common analysis, the Port/Protocol Analysis.
  The animation depicts the analysis of the data collected by the CoralReef monitors and how it is used to determine issues such as the types of traffic on the Internet and what makes up a majority of that traffic. The Port/Protocol Analysis animation is complimentary to the slide presentation titled, "ILLUSTRATIVE TRAFFIC ANALYSES."
• Some examples of advanced traffic analysis:
  • AS Path Lengths
  • Characterizing Traffic Workload
  • IP Address Utilization
  • Packet Interarrival Times
  • Packet Sizes and Sequencing
  • Prefix Lengths
• An example of a successful Student Project.

CoralReef

This section contains in introduction to CoralReef and a copy of version 3.5.1 of the software and documentation.

CoralReef is a software suite developed by CAIDA to analyze data collected by passive Internet traffic monitors. The software presently supports dedicated PC boxes using OC3mon and OC12mon cards that collect traffic data in real time. Other monitor interfaces are under development. CoralReef includes drivers, analysis, web report generation, examples, and capture software. CAIDA developers, with the support and collaboration of the Internet measurement community, maintain this package. The 5 exercises included for classroom use are based on this version of the software. Introduction to CoralReef:

• A presentation describing the motivation for and architecture of CoralReef: "Analysis Tools, platform for passive network monitoring collection of coral tools"
  
• An animation giving an overview of how CoralReef works. This animation shows the process used to gather data for traffic analysis using this software package.
• CoralReef version 3.5.1
• The CoralReef documentation documentation
• Installation guide for CoralReef 3.5.1.

Traffic Analysis Tutorial Exercises

This section contains materials that can be given to students including five sets of exercises and some background material. Full details are given on the exercises page. The additional exercises are not fully developed, but are provided to be integrated into a structured curriculum. The main exercises are:

• Timestamps
• Protocol Stacks and Encapsulation
• Traffic Statistics
• Using the CoralReef C API
• Additional Exercises

Readings

Traces