A transmission availability forecast service for Internet protocol networks

One important characteristic of a network connection is the bandwidth available to clients using that connection. The available bandwidth is determined by a combination of physical link speeds and network congestion. This paper recognises the explosion of interest in the use of Internet protocol networks within the Australian Defence Organisation and describes the development of a software tool for estimating the available bandwidth between a server and client in a distributed computing environment. We discuss the design and implementation details of the transmission availability forecaster probe and present validation studies demonstrating its reliability and accuracy in the context of actual Internet conditions.