A presentation given at APRICOT 2015 during the APNIC Plenary session.

1. APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez
ICSI-Berkeley
Beyond the radio:
Exploring the terra incognita of mobile
networks with the ICSI Netalyzr
Work done in collaboration with:
Srikanth Sundaresan, Christian Kreibich, Nicholas Weaver and Vern Paxson

2. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
The uncertain mobile future
2
IoT
Video
streaming
Augmented
Reality
+

3. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
Anticipating future traffic demands
3
• LTE deployment
• Network sharing agreements
• IPv6 support
• Peering (Cloud-mobile integration)
• LTE-Direct
• WiFi off-loading

4. ?1
Can we improve user’s network
experience by understanding how
networks actually work and how
applications behave?

5. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
Measuring mobile performance:
Classic E2E Model
User
paris.myisp.com
Web Server
www.moscow.com
5
Uplink: 2.10 Mbps
Downlink: 6.06 Mbps
RTT: 112 ms
Loss: 0.1 %

6. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
User
paris.myisp.com
Web Server
www.moscow.com
Hidden
Proxies
Bufferbloat
Handset
configuration
MTU
Carte Figurative des Pertes Successives en hommes de
l’Armée Francaise dans la Campagne de Russie (1812-1813)
— Charles Minard.1869
CGNs
EDNS
support
DNSSEC
Caches
and CDNs
How the (mobile) Internet really is
6
IPv6

7. 2
The ICSI Netalyzr Project

8. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
• User-run tool to diagnose connectivity
characteristics from the edge of the Internet
• Checks for behavioral anomalies, network
properties, privacy and security issues for
[everybody]
• Runs more than 120 tests
• Started in 2009 as a JAVA applet
• 1.6M sessions, 170 countries
• Native Android version since November 2013
• 29K installs, 130 countries
The ICSI Netalyzr Story
8
The ICSI Netalyzr
Project
sponsors:

9. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
• Large footprint (large number of operators and countries)
• High fidelity data:
• Full control of both end-points
• “You measure what you see!”
• Ability to collect contextual information
• Research outcome: ACM IMC, PAM, ACM CoNEXT, ACM
MobiSys, USENIX FOCI, …
9
Advantages of measuring from the
“edge” of the network

10. 33
Preliminary observations

11. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
Latency(ms)
0
50
100
150
200
HSPA+ LTE
RAN Latency GGSN/P-GW Latency
Default DNS Latency OpenDNS Latency
GoogleDNS Latency Akamai CDN Latency
11
RAN latency
vs IP latency
?

12. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015 12
RAN latency
vs IP latency
CDN /
EDNS
IDENTIFIED LOCAL
AKAMAI CACHE
IDENTIFIED LOCAL
GOOGLE CACHE
EDNS SUPPORT
0 25 50 75 100
% OF OPERATORS

13. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
• Complex and/or heterodox network deployments
• Low number of P-GW/GGSNs per operator: higher RTT
• Testimonial IPv6 support (including DNS)
13
RAN latency
vs IP latencyIP deployment

14. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015 14
3
Proxies MUST use the HTTP VIA header (RFC 2616)
Hidden HTTP
proxies
HTTP PROXY
HEADER
MODIFICATION
IMAGE
TRANSCODING
FOLLOWS URL
PRIVACY
LEAKS
0 25 50 75 100
% OF OPERATORS

15. 34
Conclusions and
next steps

16. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015
• Can we measure performance with a single metric?
• Fixing the IP Core can also improve user’s Internet
experience, privacy and security
• Understanding mobile traffic:
• How do mobile traffic and the network behave “in the wild”?
• What is the IoT?
16
Conclusions and next steps

17. Try Netalyzr and tell us what
you’d like to know about
your network!
17
narseo@icsi.berkeley.edu
netalyzr-help@icsi.berkeley.edu
http://www.netalyzr.icsi.berkely.edu/publications

18. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (ICSI-Berkeley) | APRICOT 2015 Plenary | 03/2015 18
3
• 8% of mobile operators leak personal information in HTTP
headers:
• IMEI/IMSI/MSISDN
• Perma-cookies: x-uidh, x-acr
• “User monetization”
• Enables user tracking by malicious parties
User’s
privacy