Patent · US Active

Method and apparatus of estimating available bandwidth on a packet network

US7443804B2 · kind B2 · utility

11Cited by
2References
12Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateNov 29, 2004
Grant dateOct 28, 2008
Priority date
Expiry dateSep 1, 2026

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L41/5009
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

By approximating a packet network, such as the Internet, by an M/M/1 queuing model, the available bandwidth of the network can determined from the variance of the distribution of the sojourn times of packets transmitted through the network. In order to determine the variance of the distribution of sojourn times, and thus the bandwidth of the packet network that is available for transport of packets from an input to an output, a probe train of N packets with known inter-packet intervals is injected from an input on a sending side of the network. At the receiving side of the network, the packet arrival times are measured and the inter-packet intervals of each pair of received packets in the received train are calculated and compared with the known inter-packet interval times of the corresponding input packets. The variance of the distribution of the sojourn times of the packets through the network can then calculated using these time differences even though the individual sojourn times of the packets through the network cannot be directly measured.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.