An Analysis of Active End-to-end Bandwidth Measurements in Wireless Networks

For active, probing-based bandwidth measurements performed on top of the unifying IP layer, it may seem reasonable to expect the measurement problem in wireless networks to be no different than the one in wired networks. However, in networks with 802.11 wireless bottleneck links we show that this is not the case. The results from the experiments presented in this paper show that the measured available bandwidth is dependent on the probe packet size (contrary to what is observed in wired networks). Another equally important finding is that the measured link capacity, using the well known TOPP model, is dependent on the probe packet size and on the cross-traffic intensity. The underlying reasons for the observed differences are analyzed by incorporating the characteristics of 802.11 wireless networks into the TOPP model. The extended model is applicable to other end-to-end bandwidth measurement methods as well, such as BART, Pathload and PTR.