Patent ID: 7826362

Claim:
A device configured to estimate the upstream data rate of a network device, comprising: a transceiver operable to transmit packets to and receive packets from the network device; and a logic engine configured to transmit a TraceRoute message to determine a nearest host with a public IP address on the Internet, the logic engine being further configured to transmit first packets at a known data rate through an upstream path for the network device to the nearest host, the logic engine being further configured to, concurrent with the transmission of the first packets, transmit second packets to the nearest host, wherein each of the second packets is configured such that the nearest host returns a reply packet through a downstream path for the network device in response to the receipt of the second packet and wherein the first packets are User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets, the logic engine being further configured to increase the known data rate until a latency and/or a loss of the reply packets exceeds an acceptable level, the logic engine thereby determining a threshold data rate for the first packets at which the latency and/or loss of the reply packets exceeds the acceptable level and to estimate the upstream data rate for the network device based upon the threshold data rate.