The rapid growth of computer networks has made the process of understanding the interaction among network components more challenging than ever. The increase in the size of networks is accompanied by the more demanding use of networks by distributed applications that critically rely on the system to function well. Consequently, monitoring the health and stability of networks has become crucial. Tools and probes to measure the performance of networks for the purpose of management, fault

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... , or performance evaluation have been developed by several research groups. There is not yet, however, a measurement infrastructure which offers systematic control and management of measurement efforts and performance data focused on supporting distributed network-aware applications. This work addresses the implementation of a scalable and extensible network measurement infrastructure used to capture network state to improve the performance of a distributed application. The experience and software described here should guide the design of future network components to help increase the accuracy and decrease the cost of gathering performance data that will be required to support advance distributed applications.