ABSTRACT
This research studied the Internet Protocol traffic on the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria
network in order to develop a strategic Bandwidth Management model. This work used a
packet sniffer on the network for the investigation of different types of Internet Protocol
(IP) traffic in order to device a bandwidth management strategy that will be based on the
characteristics of the different types of protocols, their usage and the bandwidth consumed
by each of these protocols. It was found that more than 75% of the total IP traffic on the
university network are HTTP traffic while about 19% of the traffic were termed “other IP
protocol”. A closer look at the constituents of the HTTP traffic revealed that internet mail
sites like Yahoo, Google, MNS etc constitute not less that 50 % of the total HTTP traffic
while online socialising sites like YouTube, Facebook etc also constitute a very significant
amount of traffic on the network, other sites are Microsoft and various antivirus software
sites . Based on the analysis of the data collected, it is suggested that access to less relevant
sites to academic and research activities be restricted to off peak period (5pm -9am).It is
also suggested that FTP server and Microsoft update servers be deployed on the network
to ensure that software download and updates are restricted to local traffic. The official email
for the University should be accessed only during working hours while access to all
internet free mail sites are denied.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ii
DECLARATION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. iii
CERTIFICATION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. iv
DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi
LIST OF FIGURES …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. x
LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………xi
LIST OF SYMBOLS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. xii
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… xiii
CHAPTER ONE ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
1.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
1.2 Motivation …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
1.3 Problem Definition …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
1.4 Methodology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
1.5 Thesis Outline. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
CHAPTER TWO …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
2.0 History of the Internet. …………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
2.2 What Is an Internetwork………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
2.2.1 History of Internetworking ……………………………………………………………………………….. 8
2.2.2 Internetworking Challenges ………………………………………………………………………………… 9
2.2.3 Internetworking Models …………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
2.3 OSI Model ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
2.3.1 Characteristics of the OSI Layers ………………………………………………………………………… 11
2.4 Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)Reference Model………………………. 11
2.5 Data Encapsulation ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
2.6 Internet Protocol (IP) ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 16
viii | P a g e
2.6.1 IP Addressing ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 17
2.6.2 IP Terminology ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 18
2.6.3 The Hierarchical IP Addressing Scheme……………………………………………………………….. 18
2.6.4 Network Addressing ………………………………………………………………………………………… 19
2.6.5 Network Address Range: Class A ………………………………………………………………………… 20
2.6.6 Network Address Range: Class B ………………………………………………………………………… 20
2.6.7 Network Address Range: Class C ………………………………………………………………………… 21
2.7 Bandwidth …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 21
2.8 The University current Network Setup …………………………………………………………………… 23
2.9 Detailed Configuration on the devices in the network ………………………………………………. 24
CHAPTER THREE. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 26
METHODOLOGY …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 26
3.0 Proposed Model and Methodology. …………………………………………………………………………. 26
3.2 Installations and Configurations …………………………………………………………………………….. 27
3.2.1 Installing ntop from Source ……………………………………………………………………………….. 27
3.2.2 Using ntop as a NetFlow Collector ……………………………………………………………………… 29
3.2.3 Configure ntop NetFlow Plugin to receive NetFlow Data ………………………………………… 29
3.2.4. Configure the NetFlow Probe to export Data to ntop …………………………………………….. 30
3.2.5 Configure ntop to Analyze the NetFlow Data ……………………………………………………….. 31
CHAPTER FOUR. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 326
4.0 Sample of Results and Data collected. ……………………………………………………………………… 32
4.2 Analysis of Sample data. ………………………………………………………………………………………… 40
4.3 Additional configuration of ntop. ………………………………………………………………………….. 42
4.4 Results obtained with the additional configuration …………………………………………………… 43
4.5 Deduction from Results of Data Analysis …………………………………………………………………. 44
4.6 Experimental solution. ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 45
ix | P a g e
CHAPTER FIVE ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 48
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………….. 48
5.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 48
5.1 Limitations…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 48
5.2. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 48
5.3 Suggestion for Further Work. …………………………………………………………………………………. 49
Appendix A. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 53
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction
The internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s that
saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and
development in scientific and military fields(5). The internet is an innovation (or rather a
series of innovations) that enables communication and transmission of data between
computers at different locations. It is an extremely new scientific development.
The internet revolution has permanently and fundamentally altered the way in which
Universities among others function. At a conceptual level, they remain (or ought to
remain) what they have always been, but the way in which information is produced,
shared and consumed is now so heavily intermediated by information technology that a
university depends utterly on the quality of its connections to both the commodity
Internet and the global research network(2)
Where a researcher resides or works is at one level, irrelevant: the same technology
imperative applies, to the extent that the applications, the clients, the protocols and the
operating systems are substantially the same. However, the available bandwidth is not the
same. The regulatory and competitive environments, the availability of terrestrial
infrastructure, the distance from the global network cores and the cost and quality of
bandwidth are all very different. The consequence of weak infrastructure is a dramatic
disparity in bandwidth provisioning between the developed and developing worlds.
Remedying this by buying more bandwidth is usually out of the question. Hence, the
challenge and research investigation on bandwidth management
2 | P a g e
1.2 Motivation
Towards the end of year 2005, the Ahmadu Bello University (henceforth referred to as the
University) management entered into a bandwidth consortium agreement under the
auspices of the Africa Virtual University (AVU) with five other universities in Nigeria; such
as Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ife, University of Jos, University of Portharcourt,
Bayero University Kano (BUK) and University of Ibadan (UI) to acquire a 6.5mbps of
bandwidth to improve on the 512kbps it had before the formation of the consortium. For
more than 18 months after that, the bandwidth consumption of the University community
was less than 25% of the purchased capacity. However in the past 12 months, a pattern of
traffic congestion was noted on the University network especially during work hours
(10am-3:30pm) even though less than 50% of the University community have access to
the internet and it was found that during the periods of congestion, the University traffic is
between 99% and 103%(due to burst capacity) of her purchased capacity (3). This work is
an attempt to solve the traffic congestion by devising a bandwidth management strategy
based on the analysis of the IP traffic on the network
This gets worsened with the current rate in the price of satellite bandwidth affected by the
global financial crisis and inflation, which may obviously hinder the University
management from being able to afford to buy more bandwidth for the next few years.
1.3 Problem Definition
Traffic congestion is as a result of bandwidth constraint, and the challenge for solution
such that an average network user will have a fairly smooth browsing experience while on
the University network.
What actually causes a slow internet connection or traffic congestion? Obviously, the
capacity of a given connection is finite, so if too many people request information
3 | P a g e
simultaneously, then someone will have to wait. In an ideal world, organizations would
simply order more bandwidth to accommodate the increased traffic. However, internet
access costs money, and most organizations do not have infinite budgets.
It is an interesting fact of online life that users tend to consume more bandwidth over time.
It is very rare to find a user who, once they have had access to a broadband connection, is
satisfied with going back to a low speed dialup line (13).
Over a period of time it has been noticed that even though the University may need to pay
for more bandwidth, that will never be a final solution to congestion because no matter
how large the bandwidth is, it will be oversubscribed within a very short period. Hence,
there may not be a better solution until the traffic and browsing habit of the University
community is monitored, analysed and a strategic bandwidth management policy is put in
place based on the data collected from the monitoring.
This could be addressed in several ways. However this work seeks to study the IP traffic
pattern on the University network, analyze the type of traffic using the protocol they
communicate with over the Internet.
1.4 Methodology
This work will focus mainly on the different communication protocols used by Internet
traffic for data transmission on the internet; the analysis of these protocols will be used to
develop a strategic management which will seek to maximize bandwidth for research and
scholarly traffic data, at least during work hours to reduce the congestion experienced on
the network. The research methods are:
4 | P a g e
1. Selection of monitoring software: A software that will monitor and adequately
report in details the network usage will be identified and preferably an open source
software to take care of licensing and virus issues
2. Installation and Configuration of monitoring software: A traffic monitoring
software(ntop) will be installed and configured as a monitoring server on the
network, it will be accessible from any part of the network
3. Testing of Server: The server will be tested on a small office network to ensure that
the configuration works well.
4. Installation of Server on Live network: The server will the installed on the
university live network in the network operating centre
5. Data collection: Data shall be collected from the monitoring server daily over a
period of forty five (45) days continuously.
6. Extraction of Data: Since the point of interest is the analysis of network usage by
different protocols, the protocols usage distribution shall be extracted from the
collected data for analysis.
7. The collected data will be analysed to figure out the type of IP traffic on the
network.
8. The result of the analysis will be used to recommend a bandwidth management
strategy that will best suit the objectives of the University.
An attempt will be made to suggest a simple configuration of the core server on the
university network that will implement the recommended strategy.
5 | P a g e
1.5 Thesis Outline
The whole work is divided into five chapters. Chapter One contains the introduction to the
thesis; Chapter Two explains the theoretical background of internetworking and internet
traffic transmission and protocols. Chapter There discusses the methodology adopted in
carrying out the research. Chapter Four, presents the data collected, its analysis and
results. Chapter Five contains recommendations, problems encountered and
recommendations for further work and conclusions.
IF YOU CAN'T FIND YOUR TOPIC, CLICK HERE TO HIRE A WRITER»
