Capability-based testing and evaluation of network performance

• US 20070206511A1
• Filed: 02/06/2007
• Published: 09/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Original Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Inventors: Purpura, William
• Granted Patent: US 7,894,357 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/252
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/00 Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76

Abstract

A method for real-time monitoring of the performance of a network. From a set of predefined network capabilities, one or more of the network capabilities is attributed to an application of the network. Activity of the application running in the network is sampled to individually monitor each capability attributed to the application. This method allows the collection and evaluation of usage information for each application by network capability. A user can also manipulate a NCO environment by adding phantom nodes and/or resources to observe effects on capability loads.

Claims

1. A method for real-time monitoring of the performance of a network including a plurality of nodes having one or more applications, the method comprising:

attributing, from a set of predefined network capabilities, one or more of the network capabilities to an application of the network; and

sampling activity of the application running in the network to individually monitor each capability attributed to the application.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising sampling activity of a plurality of applications running in the network to obtain a cumulative level of activity for each of the predefined network capabilities.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein application activity includes resource use.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising identifying one or more applications causing the cumulative level of activity to exceed a predetermined level.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising disabling the one or more identified applications.

6. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

adding one or more applications to the network which emulate network activity; and

performing the attributing and the sampling to observe one or more effects by the one or more added applications on performance of the network.

7. The method of claim 6, performed to predict performance of the network.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of capabilities includes at least interoperability.

9. A method for real-time monitoring of the performance of a network including a plurality of nodes having one or more applications, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of applications of the network, attributing to the application one or more network capabilities from a set of predefined network capabilities and conditioning each of the one or more network capabilities attributed to the application by one or more performance parameters;

based on the performance parameters, assigning one or more network resources to each of the one or more capabilities attributed to the applications; and

sampling resource use in the network to monitor each of the one or more capabilities individually.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the sampling is performed on each of the plurality of applications executing in the network.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising obtaining a resource usage level for a given one of the network capabilities, the obtaining performed using a model of the given one of the network capabilities.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the network includes at least one of an enterprise and a system-of-systems.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the network capabilities include interoperability, information assurance, data management, knowledge management, and collaboration in communities of interest.

14. The method of claim 9, performed to determine a trend of a cumulative level of resource use by at least one of the predefined network capabilities.

15. A system for real-time monitoring of the performance of a network including a plurality of nodes having one or more applications, the system comprising one or more computers configured to:

for substantially each application running in the network, for each of one or more predefined network capabilities attributed to the application, model resource usage by the application in support of the predefined network capability; and

use the modeled usage to monitor, by capability, network resource usage.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more computers are further configured to compare a level of resource use for one of the network capabilities to a predetermined performance level to monitor the one of the capabilities.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more computers are further configured to use one or more performance parameters associated with the one or more predefined network capabilities to model the resource usage.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more computers are further configured to sample resource usage by substantially each application running in the network to obtain a cumulative level of resource usage for each predefined network capability.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more computers are further configured to monitor, by capability, network resource usage by one or more of the nodes.

20. A method for real-time monitoring of the performance of a network having a plurality of applications, the method comprising:

imposing a predefined set of capabilities for each application;

selecting a capability across the applications in the network;

dynamically monitoring the activity of the selected capability across the applications and determining a cumulative value for the monitored activities; and

determining when the cumulative value of activities of the selected capability exceeds a predetermined value that affects the performance of the network.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising identifying an application and the capability within the application causing the cumulative value to exceed the predetermined value.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the cumulative level is measured against a predefined minimum level for the selected capability defined to support a required overall mission probability of capability effectiveness.