In message <199510230144.VAA22194@carbon.cary.mci.net>, "Brett D. Watson" write s:
My point for interjecting here is to ask:
Has anyone come up with *any* way to measure network performance (packet loss, throughput, delay) other than ping and traceroute?
LQM on non-PPP links sure would be great. A number of times I've suggested we consider LQM on bcast, with a set of LQM parameters per ARP entry. This way one end sends a LQM packet that serves as a time marker, counts packets, then includes the count in the next LQM time marker. The receiver needs only count packets between LQM packets and compare the local count against the count sent by the other end. This is an enormously oversimplified summary of LQM, but it just to make the point that LQM is Good Stuff. In the absence of LQM we have the DS3 MIB (poor substitute) and ping for the FDDI rings (difficult to get any accuracy even with routes that can respond very quickly to pings). There are a ton of counters for packets lost on the router itself (for various values of "the router") that are thought to be accurate for congestion loss. For FDDI, usually packets not transmitted on the ring indicate the ring has been too busy, but this is used more a trouble warning. Curtis ps - as you suggest, maybe some linux or bsdi boxes are appropriate where the routers are unable to reliably return pings.