[Bloat] Detecting bufferbloat from outside a node

[Paolo Valente]

Hi,
a network-monitoring company got curious about bufferbloat issues and asked me to investigate a little bit the following issue (quite interesting in my opinion). Is it possible to detect, from outside a node, if the node is bufferbloated? In particular, the only action allowed would be to observe the packets entering and leaving the node (plus, of course, their timing).

If such a general problem is to hard or impossible to solve, do you think it is still possible at least to understand, for some type of application, if the application is experiencing a high latency because of bloated buffers inside the node? (As above, by just observing packet flows from outside the node.)

Thanks,
Paolo