Fast end-to-end available bandwidth estimation for real-time multimedia networking

Abstract

Dynamic bandwidth estimation serves as an important basis for performance optimization of real-time distributed multimedia applications. The objective of this paper is to develop a bandwidth estimation algorithm for the fast fluctuated Internet. We analyze the relationship between the one way delay and the dispersion of packets train, and propose an available-bandwidth estimation algorithm which makes use of these two features without requiring administrative access to the intermediate routers along the network path. Instead of binary search or fixed-rate bandwidth adjustment of the probing data as described in literature, we use top-down approach to infer available bandwidth robustly and much more efficiently.