Patent ID: 8775616

Claim:
A computer tool including a local pre-transfer agent, that can be run on a local computer comprising random-access memory, one or more central processing units, and one or more communication interfaces for communicating with a data exchange network and which are connected to the random-access memory by means of a communication bus, said agent comprises: a first function adapted to establish a first predictive value of data transmission or reception bandwidth limit from configuration data in the random-access memory; a second function adapted to establish a second predictive value of data transmission or reception bandwidth limit from hardware configuration data relative to the one or more central processing units; a third function adapted to establish a third predictive value of data transmission or reception bandwidth limit from hardware configuration data relative to the communication bus; a fourth function adapted to establish a fourth predictive value of data transmission or reception bandwidth limit from hardware configuration data relative to the one or more communication interface; a fifth function adapted to establish a fifth predictive value of the data transmission or reception bandwidth limit, from hardware configuration data relative to permanent data storage media; and wherein, and a hardware diagnostic function adapted to invoke each one of said first, second, third, fourth, and fifth functions and to establish, from the resulting first, second, third, fourth, and fifth predictive bandwidth limit values, a bandwidth reference value for data transmission or reception, in accordance with predefined comparison rules for said predictive values; the local agent being arranged so as, upon prior call for data transfer, to launch the hardware diagnostic function and return said data transmission or reception bandwidth reference value as a quantity of interest in connection with at least one other data transmission or reception bandwidth quantity.