Modeling and Measuring Link Capacity in Communication Networks

The capacity of a link is a fundamental parameter in communication networks. Its knowledge is needed for both network planning and management. This is why capacity estimation was one of the first measurement challenges in wired communication networks. In the recent past, some experimental tests permitted imputing the poor performance of capacity measurement techniques in wireless networks to some pitfalls of the capacity model that they are based on. This paper is the natural evolution of those experimental findings. It presents a new multilayer capacity model that is consistent with the classical capacity definition but does not suffer from such pitfalls, along with an improved measurement method based on the deployment of proper software probes. The results of experiments that are conducted on IEEE 802.11x wireless links are also given