Patent ID: 7180858

Claim:
A method, comprising determining an available bandwidth of a communication path between two nodes of a computer network communicatively coupled by the communication path using probe packages that are transmitted between a sender one of the nodes and a receiver one of the nodes via the communication path at varying transmission rates, each successive transmission rate being selected according to: (i) an achieved throughput for a transmission of a preceding one of the probe packages, and (ii) a deviation between the achieved throughput for the transmission of the preceding one of the probe packages and a corresponding transmission rate of the preceding one of the probe packages, wherein the varying transmission rates are increased for successive transmission of probe packages until a probe package transmission rate (t s ) exceeds a corresponding achieved probe package throughput (t e ) over the communication path, wherein once t s exceeds t e , the varying transmission rates are increased over a last transmission rate (t r ) for which the probe package transmission rate did not exceed a corresponding achieved probe package throughput over the communication path by a fraction of a transmission rate range defined by a difference between t s and t r until t s no longer exceeds t r .