packet loss measure with real data

[Robert B.]

Hello ! 

I want to measure what packet loss we really have with our communication. So i
can  make some statements about the quality of the connection. My idea is to
make a tcp dump on both sides and then analyse thies dumps with argus. But i do
not know how ! Have installed argus-server and argus-client packet on a debian
machine. i know there is a argus daemon running. But how can i use argus to
measure packet loss ? My test Environment could be something of this:

Client--debianargus1--router--internet--router--debianargus2--client2

Would be fine if someone can give me some hints or simply a direction on point
in the manpages on how to measure packet loss between client1 and client2. (have
read the manpages of argus and ra)

For more people who wants to read more about why i want to measure can read
here:

Iam a student from germany writing my degree dissertation. My project is about
improving quality of connectivity of a group communication protocol which is
developed on our university. As a part of this project i have to measure some
data about the connection (packet delay,loss,duplication). Ive started with
simple measurement of pings and some simulations with netem and tc and so on
because we want to simulate wan connections in our laboratory. I noticed that my
simulated packet loss can not comparable with that packet loss that we have in
real wan connection between Germany and other Countries.
the Problem is that the packet loss measuring is incorrect. We measure the
packet loss with a simple ping command (over 10 mins) and the statistics about
it. We get a packet loss of 2-5% with this method. The problem is that in some
cases the connection of our clients (over the group communication protocol)
broke with that wan connection. If i simulate a packet loss of 40% !! and a
delay of 1000ms our protocol still works fine ! I think thats because of the
spreading of the lossed packets. Netem simulate the packet loss with a random
function which (i know) can be adapted with the correlations parameter. But i
think its far away from a real situation. For now i want only to measure
packetloss.

Greetings Robert !