An Efficient and Loss Tolerant Method for Measuring Available Bandwidth

Available bandwidth in important performance criterion for performance. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm called Single Burst (SB) for measuring the available bandwidth between end hosts. Additionally, we provide mathematical analysis to derive approximate upper bounds on amount of exchanged data and measurement latency for SB. Finally, we present a comparison of measurement latency, accuracy, usability, and network overhead among an implementation of SB and two existing available bandwidth measurement tools, i.e., Iperf and pathChirp. As a result, we conclude that SB measures the available bandwidth even under the condition of packet losses, with default settings, with faster response time, and without generating excessive test traffic.