Patent ID: 7729268

Claim:
A method of estimating end-to-end path capacity in a network, comprising: probing an end-to-end path to identity addresses of all hops on the end-to-end path; generating and transmitting, by a terminal node on the end-to-end path, a first time-stamp request packet to a first hop and subsequent two time-stamp request packets to a second hop, wherein the first time-stamp request packet and the subsequent two time-stamp request packets are three consecutive request packets, and the first hop and the second hop are two consecutive hops on the end-to-end path; receiving an initial time stamp from the first hop and two subsequent time stamps from the second hop in response to the three consecutive request packets; generating and transmitting, by the terminal node, a first packet of a pair of consecutive time-stamp request packets to the first hop and a second packet of the pair to the second hop; and receiving and processing at least one time-stamp generated by the two consecutive hops to produce at least one QoS estimate of a link that couples the two consecutive hops on the end-to-end path.