Abstract: Dynamic rate limiting of background traffic to alleviate congestion in the access network is enabled. ICMP echo round-trip times and ICMP losses to a nearby node outside the local area and just beyond the divergence in end-to-end paths are measured, allowing unambiguous discrimination of nearby from distant congestion points. Using round-trip time samples, either short-run delay or short-run variance in delay can be measured to estimate congestion. When combined with an appropriate control law, background traffic can be rapidly reduced to allow interactive traffic to traverse unhindered through the access network. The described system and methods can be implemented in the application-layer and without any additional support from the network.

Abstract: Dynamic rate limiting of background traffic to alleviate congestion in the access network is enabled. ICMP echo round-trip times and ICMP losses to a nearby node outside the local area and just beyond the divergence in end-to-end paths are measured, allowing unambiguous discrimination of nearby from distant congestion points. Using round-trip time samples, either short-run delay or short-run variance in delay can be measured to estimate congestion. When combined with an appropriate control law, background traffic can be rapidly reduced to allow interactive traffic to traverse unhindered through the access network. The described system and methods can be implemented in the application-layer and without any additional support from the network.

Abstract: Dynamic rate limiting of background traffic to alleviate congestion in the access network is enabled. ICMP echo round-trip times and ICMP losses to a nearby node outside the local area and just beyond the divergence in end-to-end paths are measured, allowing unambiguous discrimination of nearby from distant congestion points. Using round-trip time samples, either short-run delay or short-run variance in delay can be measured to estimate congestion. When combined with an appropriate control law, background traffic can be rapidly reduced to allow interactive traffic to traverse unhindered through the access network. The described system and methods can be implemented in the application-layer and without any additional support from the network.

Abstract: Transfer policy management methods in a peer-to-peer networking environment such as BitTorrent are provided. A download TPM maximizes the usage of available bandwidth, while focusing on as few torrents as possible. For a given list of torrents, a peer in accordance with the present invention determines how many download connections to maintain at a given time in order to maximize usage of bandwidth. If the variance of per-connection bandwidths exceeds a threshold, more connections are added until either variance does not exceed the threshold or a maximum number of connections are established. A seeding peer determines when to reduce the number of files being seeded by monitoring its average upload rate per torrent. If its average rate falls below a threshold, then the peer stops seeding a file. The file that the peer stops seeding is one to which the peer is making the smallest overall contribution.