PREDICTING THE PERFORMANCE OF A MULTI-STAGE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK UNDER LOAD FROM MULTIPLE COMMUNICATING SERVERS

A capability is provided for predicting the performance of a communications network, such as a multi-stage communications network. The predicted performance includes, in one aspect, predicting the amount of bandwidth that a server of the communications network could deliver with a full load on the network. In one aspect, the predictive capability includes determining an aggregate load for each server of the network being analyzed; performing normalization on the loads of the links used by the servers to obtain updated link and/or server bandwidths; and determining for each server, a minimum bandwidth over the links in the server's route.