An Approach to Available Bandwidth Measurement in IPv6 Networks

An approach to available bandwidth measurement in IPv6 networks called Packet Train Time Stamp (PTTS) is proposed. A new packet train (Mh-L-Mt) is designed in which the measurement packets have the IPv6 time stamp extension header and the load packets reflect the characteristic of the networks. The source sends probe packet train (Mh-L-Mt), the current router time is recorded in each measurement packets. Processing these time stamp by the bandwidth statistic algorithm, the value of available bandwidth is acquired. Using the flow label and traffic class fields in the IPv6 header, the test class and stream is designed in order to reduce the influence of cross traffic. This approach is verified through simulation.