Patent ID: 8923142

Claim:
A method of measuring network performance, comprising the following steps: transmitting via a communication network, a total number of payload packets from a sending node to a receiving node; generating at the sending node, a short list comprising a send specification for each payload packet in a selected subset of the transmitted payload packets, wherein the selected subset includes at least two transmitted payload packets and less than the total number of transmitted payload packets, and wherein each packet's send specification includes a send time stamp and a packet send identifier; generating at the receiving node, a long list comprising a receive specification for each of the total number of transmitted payload packets, wherein each packet's receive specification includes a receive time stamp and a packet receive identifier; sending the short list of send specifications from the sending node to the receiving node, using a different packet from the transmitted payload packets; bringing together at the receiving node, the generated send specifications and generated receive specifications; comparing at the receiving node, the packet send identifiers and the packet receive identifiers, to determine which packets in the long list correspond to the selected subset of packets in the short list; and estimating network performance by utilizing the send specifications and the receive specifications of the packets in the long list that correspond to the selected subset of packets in the short list.