The constraint of a wireless network has motivated many researchers to develop network-aware applications that can dynamically adjust the users' demand based on network resources. For this to happen, applications need to have some mechanism that can estimate the network bandwidth by simply adjusting their behavior based on the collected network characteristics information. In the past, there have been several proposals that provide passive and active bandwidth estimation approaches for wired and wireless network. However, little effort has been spent to address the crucial issues of reliability and congestion control especially in a wireless network environment, which stay as a sticking point for the success of network-aware application. This paper focuses on providing accurate, low-intrusiveness, and fast-convergence time bandwidth estimation for network-aware application architecture. The experimental results validate the efficiency of the proposed solution in terms of accuracy, intrusiveness, and timelines. 1. Introduction Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are becoming more widely used in homes, offices, public facilities, and university campuses. Recently, the focus is to establish Wi-Fi hotspots in convention centers, airports, shopping malls, hotels, public libraries, and cafes in which people can access email, download attachments, browse web sites or establish VPN connections to corporate networks while on the move. WLANs can be implemented as an extension or alternative for a wired LAN within a building or campus. As the number of hotspot locations is increasing, academic and industrial research have started to think of applications that can effectively utilize the network, which in return could satisfy their users’ demands for reliable wireless Internet or web access. This trend has initiated the needs of network-aware applications that can dynamically adapt the users’ demands to match the varying supply of network resources. In order to make it possible for the user to use suitable application or download appropriate file based on the current bandwidth condition, the application must be aware of network resource availability which is also known as network-aware application. With the exception of [1, 2], most of the approaches are directed mostly towards conceptual framework or have been pursued to address network-aware application issues for wired network. Furthermore, network-aware applications in wireless networks are difficult to develop [3] and implement due to the fact that bandwidth estimation techniques can be affected by reception
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