This paper addresses the throughput optimization problem in multihop ultra-wideband (UWB) networks by jointly considering network topology formation and routing. Given a spatial distribution of UWB devices and traffic requirement, we want to form piconets and select paths to maximize the network throughput. Although there have been several works considering the problem of selecting paths to achieve the optimal throughput in multihop wireless networks, to the best of our knowledge, none of them takes the topology formation into the consideration. In this paper, we use Boolean matrices to model role assignment in UWB networks and formulate the throughput optimization problem as a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem. Since the throughput optimization problem is NP-hard, we give an upper bound of the optimal throughput by relaxing some constraints and using pseudo-Boolean optimization to linearize the NLP. We prove that the solution of the upper bound is at most three times of the optimal throughput. Based on the topology formed by solving the upper bound, we formulate a lower bound of the optimal throughput as a linear programming problem and use column generation to solve the lower bound. Numerical results show that the lower bound is very close to the upper bound. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the scheme.

Owing to the asymmetry of Internet paths, more and more studies have turned to the measurement for one-way metrics. However, since the clocks at end systems often behave diversely, the synchronization between the end hosts is what we care about all along. In this paper, we firstly propose a general model for clock skew estimation in one-way measurements, which turns the problem of clock skew estimation to the solution of n-dimension equation group, and give the equation group what it needs based on different presumptions. We then present a Piece-wise Reliable Clock Skew Estimation Algorithm (PRCSEA), which introduces the reliability test of estimation results and eliminates the extra presumptions needed by other algorithms, such as only one clock adjustment in the measurements. PRCSEA solves the skew estimation problem in a heuristic way, and it can handle many special cases affecting the estimation of clock skew, such as routing change, clock hiccup and network congestion. PRCSEA is the only algorithm that can handle non-constant clock skew to the best of our knowledge. The time complexity of PRCSEA is O(n*logn), which is the same as that of Paxson's algorithm.

This paper characterizes the end-to-end routing measurement infrastructure WTracer and discusses the crucial technologies. Although WTracer is a traceroute server based Internet measurement infrastructure, it can be used in many areas, such as measurement and analysis of end-to-end routing behavior of the Internet, the estimation of the global Internet host distances, the measurement of hop count in the Internet, the discovery of Internet topology at both router level and AS level so on.

The distribution characteristic of RTT (round-trip time) is an important part of Internet end-to-end behavior characteristics. People have made lots of studies of it, but many conclusions only adapt to the cases of small packet loss rate. We study the RTT characteristics on nearly 40 end-to-end paths in CSTNET and CERNET in China, and draw the following conclusions: (1) the distribution characteristics of RTT and loss rate are dependable; (2) when loss rate is small, RTT distribution is usually unimodal, but with the increase of loss rate, RTT distribution is no longer unimodal and it becomes more and more decentralized; (3) with the increase of loss rate, the occurring times of inherent RTT tend to decrease.