Timestamps data detectives
This remains a pertinent concern for all and one that grows ever more problematic. There is often conflict between privacy as evoked by legal tenements, and the monitoring of services as is often required by security platforms. The more the one grows the greater pressure it places on the other. More importantly the QoS requirements for stability as well as user security need to be firmly addressed as users are vulnerable to unwanted attacks and interruptions of service. With this in mind, an IST based project has developed a device that inserts a precise timestamp on captured information packets. These timestamps are received by a collection server, especially designed for this purpose that it identifies and analyses the timestamps for QoS metrics such as jitter, delay and loss etc. Furthermore, the information collected can be assessed to ascertain - and prevent - hostile attacks on the system. The metrics can be further used to define system performance. For example, when using a metric dedicated to a single task, like trying to determine the download time of a specific file. They can also be used to get a round trip PING signal when trying to qualify a VoIP flow. Furthermore, they can be utilised to ferret out weaknesses in a system such as the absence of measurement somewhere in the network, or defining an abnormal event. In a world where information transfer is akin to industrial competitiveness and is rapidly transferred between multiple systems, timestamps on the packet exchange not only ensures system integrity but also serves competitiveness. Thorough testing has provided validated results, showing how the timestamp mechanism integrated into the QoS systems can be configured according to service level agreements (SLA) and service level specifications (SLS).