One way delay trend detection for available bandwidth measurement

Available bandwidth (AB) defined as a minimum spare capacity of links constituting a network path is an important QoS characteristic of the path. We propose to improve a whole range of "probe-rate" AB measurement tools that send sequences of measurement packets (called "trains") across the network path. If transmission times of packets in the train, called one way delays (OWD), show an increasing trend as packet sequence number in the train increases, then AB is believed to be lower than the rate at which the train was sent. In contrast, an absence of a trend indicates that AB is higher than the rate of the train. We propose an algorithm for efficient OWD trend detection and compare it to widely used OWD trend detection tests.