A Performance Study of Bandwidth Measurement Tools over Mobile Connections

The knowledge of the present available bandwidth on a network path is essential in numerous contexts, such as network management and streaming applications. A network path nowadays often contains at least one wireless link. This is obviously true for mobile users having a wireless connection to the Internet through a laptop or mobile terminal. The existing tools for measuring end-to-end available bandwidth are developed and optimized for paths with only guided media links. Since the characteristics for wired links and radio links differ in many aspects, such as fluctuations in capacity and stability, the network tools need to be evaluated also for network paths containing wireless links. In this investigation we have performed experiments over a high-speed downlink UMTS channel. This makes the present paper unique in the sense that it evaluates and analyzes the applicability of available-bandwidth measurement tools over a radio interface in a wide-area mobile communication network. For the experiments, a commercial mobile network has been used. The measurements show that it is feasible to achieve reliable estimates under certain circumstances. However, some cases pose challenges which motivate further studies.