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research-article

Fathom: a browser-based network measurement platform

Authors:

Renata Teixeira,

Christian Kreibich,

Nicholas Weaver,

Vern PaxsonAuthors Info & Claims

IMC '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Internet Measurement Conference

Pages 73 - 86

https://doi.org/10.1145/2398776.2398786

Published: 14 November 2012 Publication History

Abstract

For analyzing network performance issues, there can be great utility in having the capability to measure directly from the perspective of end systems. Because end systems do not provide any external programming interface to measurement functionality, obtaining this capability today generally requires installing a custom executable on the system, which can prove prohibitively expensive. In this work we leverage the ubiquity of web browsers to demonstrate the possibilities of browsers themselves offering such a programmable environment. We present Fathom, a Firefox extension that implements a number of measurement primitives that enable websites or other parties to program network measurements using JavaScript. Fathom is lightweight, imposing < 3.2% overhead in page load times for popular web pages, and often provides 1 ms timestamp accuracy. We demonstrate Fathom's utility with three case studies: providing a JavaScript version of the Netalyzr network characterization tool, debugging web access failures, and enabling web sites to diagnose performance problems of their clients.

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Summary Review Documentation for "Fathom: A Browser-based Network Measurement Platform", Authors: M. Dhawan, J. Samuel, R. Teixeira, C. Kreibich, M. Allman, N. Weaver, and V. Paxson

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Cited By

Taibi IHadjadj-Aoul YBarakat C(2022)Leveraging Web browsing performance data for network monitoring: a data-driven approachGLOBECOM 2022 - 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference10.1109/GLOBECOM48099.2022.10001139(6121-6126)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOBECOM48099.2022.10001139
Bonniot LNeumann CTaiani F(2021)Towards Internet-Scale Convolutional Root-Cause Analysis with DIAGNET2021 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS)10.1109/IPDPS49936.2021.00084(746-755)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS49936.2021.00084
Burnett SChen LCreager DEfimov MGrigorik IJones BMadhyastha HPapageorge PRogan BStahl CTuttle JBhagwan RPorter G(2020)Network error loggingProceedings of the 17th Usenix Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation10.5555/3388242.3388312(985-998)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3388242.3388312
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Index Terms

Fathom: a browser-based network measurement platform
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
2. Networks

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IMC '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Internet Measurement Conference

November 2012

572 pages

ISBN:9781450317054

DOI:10.1145/2398776

General Chairs:
John Byers
Boston University
,
Jim Kurose
University of Massachusetts Amherst
,
Program Chairs:
Ratul Mahajan
Microsoft Research
,
Alex C. Snoeren
UC San Diego

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGMETRICS: ACM Special Interest Group on Measurement and Evaluation
SIGCOMM: ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication
USENIX Assoc: USENIX Assoc

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 14 November 2012

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SIGCOMM
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IMC '12: Internet Measurement Conference

November 14 - 16, 2012

Massachusetts, Boston, USA

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Cited By

Taibi IHadjadj-Aoul YBarakat C(2022)Leveraging Web browsing performance data for network monitoring: a data-driven approachGLOBECOM 2022 - 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference10.1109/GLOBECOM48099.2022.10001139(6121-6126)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOBECOM48099.2022.10001139
Bonniot LNeumann CTaiani F(2021)Towards Internet-Scale Convolutional Root-Cause Analysis with DIAGNET2021 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS)10.1109/IPDPS49936.2021.00084(746-755)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS49936.2021.00084
Burnett SChen LCreager DEfimov MGrigorik IJones BMadhyastha HPapageorge PRogan BStahl CTuttle JBhagwan RPorter G(2020)Network error loggingProceedings of the 17th Usenix Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation10.5555/3388242.3388312(985-998)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3388242.3388312
Bonniot LNeumann CTaïani F(2020)DiagSysProceedings of the 21st International Middleware Conference Industrial Track10.1145/3429357.3430520(16-22)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3429357.3430520
Hounsel ABorgolte KSchmitt PHolland JFeamster N(2020)Comparing the Effects of DNS, DoT, and DoH on Web PerformanceProceedings of The Web Conference 202010.1145/3366423.3380139(562-572)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3366423.3380139
Taibi IHadjadj-Aoul YBarakat C(2020)Data Driven Network Performance Inference From Within The Browser2020 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC)10.1109/ISCC50000.2020.9219573(1-6)Online publication date: Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCC50000.2020.9219573
Roquero PMagaña ELeira RAracil J(2020)Performance evaluation of client-based traffic sniffing for very large populationsComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2019.106985166:COnline publication date: 15-Jan-2020
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Trinh TVu TLe V(2019)Browser Extension-based Crowdsourcing Model for Website MonitoringProceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology10.1145/3368926.3369706(465-472)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2019
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Asrese AEravuchira SBajpai VSarolahti POtt J(2019)Measuring Web Latency and Rendering Performance: Method, Tools, and Longitudinal DatasetIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2019.289671016:2(535-549)Online publication date: Jun-2019
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Filipe RAraujo F(2019)Client-Side Monitoring of HTTP Clusters Using Machine Learning Techniques2019 18th IEEE International Conference On Machine Learning And Applications (ICMLA)10.1109/ICMLA.2019.00053(282-286)Online publication date: Dec-2019
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