The normalized Bushmitch-Fikus-Hamrick (NBFH) metric

Most assessments of network performance make use of metrics that are defined directly in terms of concepts relevant to the transport, network, link and physical layers. These measures of performance provide engineering data useful in characterizing those layers of the architecture, but they do not directly address the operational impact of network behavior. Measures of effectiveness do address operational impacts from an end user perspective, but generally require simulation and analysis of both system and operational architectures. In this paper, we present a framework for assessing the operational impact of network performance using metrics derived from an examination of the network traffic alone, without explicit reference to an operational model but utilizing operationally driven criteria. We apply the framework to an evaluation of different Courses of Action (COAs) for allocating levels of service platforms to the end users of the networked system. We examine the sensitivity of the metric to variations in its parameters with special attention to the operational weighting factors. We conclude that this framework provides a well-behaved objective function that adequately characterizes the degree to which a networked system satisfies its operational requirements. This allows for the evaluation of a range of network and operational alternatives using existing network transport analysis tools without the need for coupled operational simulation.