Benchmarking Methodology (bmwg) Charter


NOTE: This charter is accurate as of the 37th IETF Meeting in San Jose. It may now be out-of-date. (Consider this a "snapshot" of the working group from that meeting.) Up-to-date charters for all active working groups can be found elsewhere in this Web server.

Chair(s)

Operational Requirements Area Director(s):

Mailing List Information

Description of Working Group

The major goal of the Benchmarking Methodology Working Group is to make a series of recommendations concerning the measurement of the performance characteristics of various internetworking technologies; further, these recommendations may focus on the systems or services that are built from these technologies.

Each recommendation will describe the class of equipment, system, or service being addressed; discuss the performance characteristics that are pertinent to that class; clearly identify a set of metrics that aid in the description of those characteristics; specify the methodologies required to collect said metrics; and lastly, present the requirements for the common, unambiguous reporting of benchmarking results.

Because the demands of a class may vary from deployment to deployment, this Working Group will not attempt to define acceptance criteria or performance requirements.

Currently, there are two distinct efforts underway in the BMWG. The first addresses the metrics and methodologies associated with benchmarking network interconnect devices. The second effort (IPPM) focuses on determining the practical benchmarks and procedures needed in gaining insight for users and providers of IP Internet services.

An ongoing task is to provide a forum for the discussion and the advancement of measurements designed to provide insight on the operation internetworking technologies.

Goals and Milestones

Jun 96
Draft a set of path performance metric definitions, including delay, flow capacity, and packet loss for the IPPM meeting in June, 1996.
Jun 96
Expand the current Ethernet switch benchmarking methodology draft to define the metrics and methodologies particular to the general class of connectionless, LAN switches.

Current Internet-Drafts

Request for Comments