title: Programmatically determining maximum transfer rate
body: <p>I have a problem that requires me to calculate the maximum upload and download available, then limit my program's usage to a percentage of it. However, I can't think of a good way to find the maximums.</p>
  
  <p>At the moment, the only solution I can come up with is transfering a few megabytes between the client and server, then measuring how ling the transfer took. This solution is very undesirable, however, because with 100,000 clients it could potentially result in too much of an increase to our server's bandwidth usage (which is already too high).</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?</p>
  
  <p>Note that I'm mostly interested in the limitation of data transferred up to the point it leaves the ISP's network; I think this is most likely where a bottleneck that would cause other programs' communication to degrade would occur. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> After further investigation, I don't think this is possible; there are too many variables involved to accurately measure the maximum transfer rate when leaving the ISP's network. Leaving the question open, in case someone comes up with an accurate solution, though.</p>