Inferring link characteristics from end-to-end path measurements

In the Internet, because of huge scale and distributed administration, it is of practical importance to infer network-internal characteristics that cannot be measured directly. We propose a general method of determining characteristics of links from given characteristics of end-to-end paths. Our method can be applied to an arbitrary path-topology. Furthermore we show the general conditions that the link characteristics to be inferred must satisfy. Packet loss and queuing delay time are shown to satisfy them. Case studies which our method can treat are also provided.