Active measurements are integral to the operation and management of networks, and invaluable to supporting empirical network research. Unfortunately, it is often cost-prohibitive and logistically difficult to widely deploy measurement nodes, especially in the core. In this work, we consider the feasibility of tightly integrating measurement within the infrastructure by using Software Defined Networks (SDNs). We introduce "SDN as Active Measurement Infrastructure" (SAAMI) to enable measurements to originate from any location where SDN is deployed, removing the need for dedicated measurement nodes and increasing vantage point diversity. We implement ping and traceroute using SAAMI, as well as a proof-of-concept custom measurement protocol to demonstrate the power and ease of SAAMI's open framework. Via a large-scale measurement campaign using SDN switches as vantage points, we show that SAAMI is accurate, scalable, and extensible.
@cite_27: The One-Way Active Measurement Protocol (OWAMP) measures unidirectional characteristics such as one-way delay and one-way loss. High-precision measurement of these one-way IP performance metrics became possible with wider availability of good time sources (such as GPS and CDMA). OWAMP enables the interoperability of these measurements. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
@cite_10: Software-defined networking provides flexibility in designing networks by allowing distributed network state to be managed by logically centralized control programs. However, this flexibility brings added complexity, which requires new debugging tools that can provide insights into network behavior. We propose a tool, SDN traceroute, that can query the current path taken by any packet through an SDN-enabled network. The path is traced by using the actual forwarding mechanisms at each SDN-enabled device without changing the forwarding rules being measured. This enables administrators to discover the forwarding behavior for arbitrary Ethernet packets, as well as debug problems in both switch and controller logic. Our prototype implementation requires only a few high-priority rules per device, runs on commodity hardware using only the required features of the OpenFlow 1.0 specification, and can generate traces in about one millisecond per hop.
@cite_2: 
The notion of using network devices to perform active measurements was first standardized in @cite_27 and @cite_2 , protocols for performing one and two-way active measurements of delay and loss. Our work is broader, generalizes these protocols, and provides a means for such schemes to be implemented in network switches without explicit vendor support. Most closely related to our own work is SDN traceroute @cite_10 , a technique to reveal the sequence of switches and ports that actual data-plane packets traverse in an SDN network. SDN traceroute relies on injecting measurement probes via messages, and installing rules to match and retrieve tagged probe traffic via messages. While SDN traceroute and rely on the same primitives, is designed to provide a platform for existing measurements, IP-level ping and traceroute, using SDNs.