Passive Method for Estimating Packet Loss Ratio Based on TCP Retransmission Behavior

Takuya TOJO
Hiroyuki KITADA
Kimihide MATSUMOTO

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E96-B    No.7    pp.1908-1917
Publication Date: 2013/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E96.B.1908
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Internet
Keyword: 
TCP,  passive measurement,  packet loss ratio,  RTO,  ACK,  SACK,  

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Summary: 
Estimating the packet loss ratio of TCP transfers is essential for passively measuring Quality of Service (QoS) on the Internet traffic. However, only a few studies have been conducted on this issue. The Benko-Veres algorithm is one technique for estimating the packet loss ratio of two networks separated by a measurement point. However, this study shows that it leads to an estimation error of a few hundred percent in the particular environment where the packet loss probabilities between the two networks are asymmetrical. We propose a passive method for packet loss estimation that offers improved estimation accuracy by introducing classification conditions for the TCP retransmission timeout. An experiment shows that our proposed algorithm suppressed the maximum estimation error to less than 15%.