Assolo, a New Method for Available Bandwidth Estimation

End-to-end available bandwidth estimation is very important for bandwidth dependent applications, quality of service verification and traffic engineering. Although several techniques and tools have been developed in the past, producing reliable estimations in real-time still remains challenging -- it is necessary to ensure that the measurement process is accurate, non-intrusive and robust to non-deterministic delays or traffic bursts. This paper presents ASSOLO, a new active probing tool for estimating available bandwidth based on the concept of ``self-induced congestion''. ASSOLO features a new probing traffic profile called reach (Reflected ExponentiAl Chirp), which tests a wide range of rates being more accurate in the center of the probing interval. Moreover, the tool runs inside a real-time operating system and uses some de-noising techniques to improve the measurement process. Experimental results show that ASSOLO outperforms pathChirp, a state-of-the-art measurement tool, estimating available bandwidth with greater accuracy and stability.