Non-cooperative available bandwidth estimation towards ADSL links

Existing tools for the estimation of the end-to-end available bandwidth require control of both end hosts of the path and this significantly limits their usability. In this paper we present ABwProbe, a single-ended tool for available bandwidth estimation against non-cooperative hosts. Although ABwProbe is general enough to be used on any Internet path, we focus our attention on ADSL links exploring the possibility of measuring the downlink available bandwidth of a non-cooperative ADSL host. We study the effect of cross-traffic on the uplink, finding that only large packets may deteriorate ABwProbe’s measurements and we present two techniques to detect and filter the effect of uplink cross-traffic.