Patent ID: 8068436

Claim:
A method, comprising: generating histogram data using packet pairs received from a data source via a network, the histogram data including bandwidth samples derived from the received packet pairs, the histogram data being associated with a plurality of bins of a histogram; spatially filtering the histogram data, the spatial filtering including: averaging values of samples in each bin of the plurality of bins to form a bin average for each bin; forming smoothed bin counts for the plurality of bins by calculating, for each bin, a weighted average of a bin count of that bin and of bin count(s) of adjacent bin(s), the bin counts being weighted utilizing normalized scaling factors; and forming a smoothed bin average for a bin in the plurality of bins having a highest smoothed bin count by calculating, for the bin in the plurality of bins having the highest smoothed bin count, a weighted average of a bin average of that bin and of bin average(s) of adjacent bin(s), the bin averages utilizing normalized scaling factors; and estimating bandwidth available on the network using the spatially filtered histogram data.