Tests Cases For Improving Overlay Performance in Constrained Networks

What we want to test:  latency, bandwidth, and packet failure rate

We can test latency using existing projects such as the Brunet.Graph and the Brunet.Simulator.  Since we have no information on packet failure rate testing this on these two products becomes somewhat tricky, but I could look up discussion on failure rate theory and/or use a sliding metric.

Bandwidth tests require more real systems.  We currently have a student attempting to install NistNAT on a virtual machine and we could also do wide-area tests involving planetlab.

Finally, we would want a full system test involving a test of our real system (Grid Appliance or SocialVPN) and gather statistics using them.

So the next thought is to determine the test metrics.  I would suppose the best mechanism for test would be to look at individual points to determine the amount of connections that perform better, worse, or stay the same given a specific optimization.

So before my imagination gets any better of me, I need to take a step back and add those features to the system.  At which point, I can start discussing the addition of these new optimizations.