Estimating Available Bandwidth on Access Links by Means of Stratified Probing

This paper presents a novel approach for estimation of available bandwidth on access links using stratified probing. The main challenges of performing such estimations in this network part is related to the bursty nature of cross-traffic and the related uncertainty regarding appropriate time period for producing sample estimates. Under the fluid flow traffic model assumption, these problems would not be present – but for the access network part this assumption does not hold. The method suggested in this paper is based on a four-phase approach. In the first phase a traffic profile for the cross-traffic is established, with focus on detecting periodic behavior and duration of respectively burst and idle sub-periods. In the second and third phase, the active probing is split into strata and synchronized according to the burst/idle sub periods. In the final phase, the actual probing and estimation of available bandwidth takes place. The method is analyzed by means of experiments in a controlled lab environment, using adaptive video streaming as the service with a periodical behavior. The empirical results are considered quite promising both in terms of accuracy and the low degree of intrusiveness facilitated by the stratified approach. 