Efficient Estimation of Available Bandwidth along Network Paths Biography

Neginhal, Mradula S. Efficient Estimation of Available Bandwidth Along Network Paths. (Under the direction of Assistant Professor Khaled Harfoush and Professor Harry Perros). Measuring the available bandwidth of a network path is important to support congestion control protocols, Internet traffic characterization, overlay network routing, capacity provisioning, and traffic engineering, among other applications. Previous techniques to estimate the available bandwidth are mainly based on (1) simplifying assumptions and theoretical queueing models, (2) estimating the exact queueing delays incurred by probe packets, and/or on (3) saturating the network path with probe packets. In this thesis we introduce a novel technique to estimate the available bandwidth of a network path and the speed of the most utilized link – the tight link – along this path. Our technique assumes no a priori knowledge about the measured path, does not stress the network with a significant load, and does not require complicated measurements of accurate packet dispersions or queueing delays. It merely relies on a simple binary test to estimate whether each probe packet has queued in the network or not. Theoretical analysis and experimental results validate the ability of the proposed technique to provide accurate bandwidth estimates. Efficient Estimation of Available Bandwidth Along Network Paths