Focus on accuracy and consistency of advanced applications for monitoring the future Internet

The quality and nature of statistics obtained from network monitoring and management have significant implications in accounting, operations, security and quality of service management. In this paper, we take a closer look at the requirements of monitoring and management in the context of the future Internet and emerging applications and examine the limitations of current practices. We show that the limitations essentially stem from the timestamp attribute of a statistic. Without an implicit or explicit timestamp the usability of a statistic is severely limited especially as the network gets mobile and highspeed and, as more advanced applications appear.