Real-time probing of end-to-end capacity and available bandwidth in heterogeneous local networks

Current QoS solutions for home networks are inspired by Internet technologies and typically based on traffic classification and prioritization. They are not well adopted because they need to be supported by every device in the end-to-end path to be effective. Besides, their use still does not guarantee that enough bandwidth will be available between a server and a client. It is therefore preferable to diagnose a home network in real time before admitting a new flow. We demonstrate a new method which probes the end-to-end path capacity as well as the available bandwidth in a small-scale IP network. Its distinguishing features are the applicability to networks consisting of legacy devices and any mixture of wired, wireless, and no-new-wires links, in combination with fast convergence, high accuracy, and non-intrusiveness.