Bandwidth probe: An end-to-end bandwidth measurement technique in wireless mesh networks

Abstract

End-to-end Bandwidth Estimation is an important metric for network management and monitoring. It can also improve the effectiveness of congestion control mechanism, audio/video stream adoration and dynamic overlay. In recent years, many techniques have been developed for bandwidth estimation in the wired as well as the last-hop wireless networks, but they under-perform in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). This is because of the lack of understandability of the wireless multi-hop environment. In this paper, we present an active bandwidth measurement technique called Bandwidth Probe based on the packet dispersion principle. It measures the steady state bandwidth of the system while considering the effects of the FIFO cross and CSMA/CA-based contending traffic. We also show how to achieve the stationary state behavior of the system to limit the number of probe packets. On simulation, Bandwidth Probe gives a accurate estimation of the available bandwidth using average convergence time and lower intrusiveness. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.