Measuring End-to-End Bandwidth With Iperf Using Web100

End-to-end bandwidth estimation tools like Iperf though fairly accurate are intrusive. This paper describes how with an instrumented TCP stack (Web100), one can estimate the end-to-end bandwidth accurately, while consuming significantly less network bandwidth and time. The paper modified Iperf to use Web100 to detect the end of slow-start and estimate the end-to-end bandwidth by measuring the amount of data sent for a short period (1 second) after the slow-start, when the TCP throughput is relatively stable. The paper obtained bandwidth estimates differing by less than 10% when compared to running Iperf for 20 seconds, and savings in bandwidth estimation time of up to 94% and savings in network traffic of up to 92%.