Patent ID: 8908540

Claim:
A method for determining available bandwidth in a network environment, the method comprising: transmitting a plurality of test packets from a sending node, wherein each test packet includes a sequence number; receiving at the sending node a plurality of test receipt packets corresponding to the plurality of transmitted test packets from the sending node, wherein each test receipt packet includes the sequence number of the corresponding test packet; for forward path available bandwidth determination, forming one packet cluster from the plurality of the test packets transmitted from the sending node if all of the test packets transmitted from the sending node are received at a target node and if one or more of the test packets are not received at the target node, forming two or more packet clusters, each of which not containing the test packets that were not received by the target node; for backward path available bandwidth determination, transmitting a plurality of test packets from the target node and forming one packet cluster from the plurality of the test packets transmitted from the target node if all of the test packets transmitted from the target node are received at the sending node and if one or more of the test packets are not received at the sending node, forming two or more packet clusters, each of which not containing the test packets that were not received by the sending node; for round trip path available bandwidth determination, forming one packet cluster from the plurality of the test packets transmitted from the sending node if all of the corresponding test receipt packets are received at the sending node and if one or more of the corresponding test receipt packets are not received at the sending node, forming two or more packet clusters, each of which not containing the test packets for which the corresponding test receipt packets were not received by the sending node; and determining the forward path available bandwidth, the backward path available bandwidth and the round trip path available bandwidth based on the respective one or more of the formed packet cluster(s) and an inter-delivery time between a first test packet and a last test packet in said respective one or more of the formed packet cluster(s), wherein each packet cluster includes a set of delivery times of at least two test packets having sequence numbers that are continuous.