A method to estimate the timestamp accuracy of measurement hardware and software tools

Due to the complex diversity of contemporary Internet applications, computer network measurements have gained considerable interest during the recent years. Since they supply network research, development and operations with data important for network traffic modelling, performance and trend analysis etc., the quality of these measurements affect the results of these activities and thus the perception of the network and its services. One major source of error is the timestamp accuracy obtained from measurement hardware and software. On this background, we present a method that can estimate the timestamp accuracy obtained from measurement hardware and software. The method is used to evaluate the timestamp accuracy of some commonly used measurement hardware and software. Results are presented for the Agilent J6800/J6830A measurement system, the Endace DAG 3.5E card, the Packet Capture Library (PCAP) either with PF-RING or Memory Mapping, and a RAW socket using either the kernel PDU timestamp (iocti) or the CPU counter (TSC) to obtain timestamps.