Home network or access link? Locating last-mile downstream throughput bottlenecks

Srikanth Sundaresan, Nick Feamster, Renata Teixeira

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

As home networks see increasingly faster downstream throughput speeds, a natural question is whether users are benefiting from these faster speeds or simply facing performance bottlenecks in their own home networks. In this paper, we ask whether downstream throughput bottlenecks occur more frequently in their home networks or in their access ISPs. We identify lightweight metrics that can accurately identify whether a throughput bottleneck lies inside or outside a user’s home network and develop a detection algorithm that locates these bottlenecks. We validate this algorithm in controlled settings and report on two deployments, one of which included 2,652 homes across the United States. We find that wireless bottlenecks are more common than access-link bottlenecks—particularly for home networks with downstream throughput greater than 20 Mbps, where access-link bottlenecks are relatively rare.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPassive and Active Measurement - 17th International Conference, PAM 2016, Proceedings
EditorsThomas Karagiannis, Xenofontas Dimitropoulos
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages111-123
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783319305042
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Event17th International Conference on Passive and Active Measurement, PAM 2016 - Heraklion, Greece
Duration: Mar 31 2016Apr 1 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9631
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other17th International Conference on Passive and Active Measurement, PAM 2016
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityHeraklion
Period3/31/164/1/16

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

Keywords

  • Bottleneck location
  • Last-mile
  • Passive measurements
  • Wireless bottlenecks

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