DCE: A Novel Delay Correlation Measurement for Tomography with Passive Realization

Abstract: Tomography is important for network design and routing optimization. Prior approaches require either precise time synchronization or complex cooperation. Furthermore, active tomography consumes explicit probeing resulting in limited scalability. To address the first issue we propose a novel Delay Correlation Estimation methodology named DCE with no need of synchronization and special cooperation. For the second issue we develop a passive realization mechanism merely using regular data flow without explicit bandwidth consumption. Extensive simulations in OMNeT++ are made to evaluate its accuracy where we show that DCE measured delay correlation is highly identical with the true value. Also from test result we find that mechanism of passive realization is able to achieve both regular data transmission and purpose of tomography with excellent robustness versus different background traffic and package size.