Methods for Rapidly Testing Node Reachability with Congestion Control and Evaluation

Abstract

Most ISPs and telecom carriers test reachability to their nodes and interfaces by SNMP or ICMP echo. However, testing for on the order of 10,000-100,000 nodes by traditional techniques takes a long time. Furthermore, huge numbers of short packets occupy the capacity of the links and interfere with other flows. At this time, test software using traditional techniques cannot distinguish whether the reason for packet loss is unreachability or congestion. We should use methods for sending many packets, a congestion detection method, and congestion control method when we test for node reachability. By using these methods, ISP and telecom carriers will obtain reliable results. In this paper, we report such methods and experimental results of this implementation.