Deploying and Managing a Network of Autonomous Internet Measurement Probes: Lessons Learned

We present our experience with design, development, deployment, and operation of a nation-wide network of mobile Internet measurement probes. Mobile internet is becoming increasingly important, with new technologies being deployed on a regular basis. In the last decade we have seen a transition over a multitude of data transmission technologies, from EDGE, UMTS, and HSPA to LTE, with 5G already on the horizon. This presents an extremely heterogeneous environment where problems are difficult to pinpoint, because of either the fast changing radio channel conditions, daily mobility of the user base, or a number of fallback technologies that are available at a specific location and chosen by the terminal itself. To quantify these conditions, we have developed a mobile internet measurement probe called QMON, which can be either statically deployed or used in drive measurements and is able to collect hundreds of key performance indicators on physical, network, and application layers of the network stack, acting at the same time as an event-driven real-time sensor network and a batch-mode detailed data collection device. In this paper we expose some of the design considerations and pitfalls; among them are the problems of managing and monitoring the remote probes that measure the same communication channel that is also used for their control.