Measuring Traffic on the Wireless Medium: Experience and Pitfalls
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Abstract
A number of measurement studies have examined traffic characteristics in
wireless networks. Most of these measurements have been conducted from the
wired portion of the network. In this paper we argue that such
measurements are not sufficient to expose either the characteristics of
the wireless medium or how such characteristics impact traffic patterns.
While it is easier to make consistent measurements in the wired part of a
network, such measurements can not observe the significant vagaries
present in the wireless medium itself. As a consequence constructing an
efficient and accurate measurement system from a wireless vantage point is
important but usually quite difficult. In our work we have explored the
various issues in implementing such a system to monitor traffic in an
802.11 based wireless network. We identify different challenges in making
such measurements and provide detailed experimental evidence in their
supports. Our work shows that the wireless measurement allows us to infer
much richer information about the medium characteristics than is possible
with a measurements made on the wired part of the network. We apply our
measurement technique to study the end-to-end wireless network delay. We
show that wireless monitoring can effectively identify the causes of end-to-end delays.
(UMIACS-TR-2002-101)