NEXT: New enhanced available bandwidth measurement technique, algorithm and evaluation

This paper presents a unique probing scheme and a rate adjustment algorithm that can be used for estimating the available bandwidth (ABW) of an end-to-end network path more accurately and non-intrusively. The proposed algorithm is based on the well-known concept of self-induced congestion and it features a unique probing train structure in which there is a region where packets are sampled more frequently than in other region. This high-density region enables our algorithm to find the turning point more accurately. When the dynamic ABW is outside of this region, we readjust the lower rate and upper rate of the packet stream to fit the dynamic ABW into that region. We appropriately adjust the range between the lower rate and the upper rate using spread factors, which enable us to keep the number of packets few and thus we measured the ABW non-intrusively. Simulation results show that our algorithm outperforms PathChirp, a state of the art measurement algorithm, estimating the ABW with greater accuracy and stability in presence of different cross traffic sources.