Importance

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Abstract

In packet-based networks (10), it is often desired to test communications between two specific stations (11, 12). This can generally be effected from a first one of the stations (11) by requesting the other station (12) to `loop-back` a test packet sent from the first station. The first station (11), on receiving back the test packet, can thereby ascertain that not only is communication with the other station (12) possible, but it can also measure the round trip time. However, more complex characteristics of the transmission path between the stations (11, 12) are not ascertainable in this manner. The transmission of a predetermined sequence of packets permits such characteristics to be determined by observing the effect of the network (10) on the sequence considered as a whole. Thus by varying packet size in a sequence, characteristics such as bandwidth, propagation delay, queuing delay and the network's internal packet size can be derived. The use of bursts of packets enables buffer size and re-sequencing characteristics to be determined.

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First Claim