Evaluating the potential of bandwidth estimators

Abstract — Many packet probing based available bandwidth estimation techniques have been proposed recently. However, their performance evaluation procedures remain in a coarse-granular fashion, which provide little information about the sources of performance inadequacy. We initiate the effort towards finegranular performance metrics and evaluation procedures that help identify the causes of measurement errors, that can be used to retroactively optimize the design of measurement methods. As the first step to this end, we propose a metric called singlehop potential, to assess the capability of bandwidth estimation algorithms to reach the measurement target in an asymptotically accurate manner. We propose off-line methodology to evaluate the single-hop potential of various bandwidth estimators and show how this procedure can help improve the design of measurement techniques. I