Blixt™ : an available bandwidth measurements’ approach for high-speed mobile networks

Abstract

Mobile networks are in the process of becoming the world’s leading medium for data traffic. This challenge has raised the bar for Quality of Services (QoS) provided by the mobile network operators. It requires methods and tools to verify the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and benchmark competitors by comparing metrics of QoS, e.g. the round-trip time and available bandwidth. For this purpose, Blixt™ has been developed, which is a property of InfoVista Sweden AB. Blixt™ is an Android application which measures the available bandwidth and the round-trip time for the latest generation of mobile networks. Blixt™ approach relies on a time-stamping protocol commonly known as Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP). This research work discusses how the packet probing parameters affect the accuracy of measurements and the level of intrusiveness. The performance of the technique was experimentally tested and compared to other tools and methods, namely, iPerf3, nPerf and FTP test.