Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This report unveils new algorithms for actively measuring (not estimating) available bandwidths with very low intrusion, computing cross traffic, thus estimating the physical bandwidth, provides mathematical proof that the algorithms are accurate, and addresses conditions, requirements, and limitations for new and existing algorithms for measuring network bandwidths. The paper also discusses a number of important terminologies and issues for network bandwidth measurement, and introduces a fundamental parameter -Maximum Burst Size that is critical for implementing algorithms based on multiple packets.