Patent ID: 7826363

Claim:
A method of estimating available bandwidth on an internet access network, comprising: (a) transmitting, by a terminal adapter, an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packet to a device residing on the internet access network at a first bit rate; (b) receiving, by the terminal adapter, an ICMP echo reply packet responsive to step (a); (c) repeating, by the terminal adapter, step (a) if the ICMP echo reply packet is not received; (d) determining, by the terminal adapter, a second bit rate of the ICMP echo reply packet; (e) iteratively performing, by the terminal adapter, steps (a), (b), (c) and (d) by increasing the first bit rate for each iteration until the second bit rate is less than the first bit rate; and (f) estimating, by the terminal adapter, the available bandwidth based on the second bit rate.