Introduction
Network measurement is the practice of collecting and analyzing data about a network’s structure and behavior—traffic, topology, routing, and performance—to understand how it works, operate it safely, troubleshoot problems, and plan capacity.
Why measure
scientific insight (e.g., characterize traffic/topology/protocol dynamics) and operations (billing, fault detection/diagnosis, capacity planning).
What to measure
end-to-end performance (latency, loss, throughput, page download time), link stats (utilization, error rate), topology and routing state, demand/traffic matrices.