On the Use of Affordable COTS Hardware for Network Measurements: Limits and Good Practices

Wireless access technologies are widespread in domestic scenarios, and end users extensively use mobile phones or tablets to browse the Web. Therefore, methods and platforms for the measurement of network key performance indicators must be adapted to the peculiarities of this environment. In this light, the experiments should capture the true conditions of such connections, particularly in terms of the hardware and multi-device interactions that are present in real networks. On the basis of this, this paper presents an evaluation of the capabilities of several affordable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices as network measuring probes, for example, computers-on-module or domestic routers with software measurement tools. Our main goal is to detect the limits of such devices and define a guide of good practices to optimize them. Hence, our work paves the way for the development of fair measurement systems in domestic networks with low expenditures. The obtained experimental results show that these types of devices are suitable as network measuring probes, if they are adequately configured and minimal accuracy losses are assumable.