Distributed applications require information to effectively utilize the network. Some of the information they require is the current and maximum bandwidth, current and minimum latency, bottlenecks, burst frequency and congestion extent. This type of information allows applications to determine parameters like the optimal TCP buffer size. In this paper, we present a cooperative information-gathering tool called the Network Characterization Service (NCS). NCS runs in the user space and is used to acquire network information. Its protocol is designed for scalable and distributed deployment, similar to DNS. Its algorithms provide efficient, speedy and accurate detection of bottlenecks, especially dynamic bottlenecks. On current and future networks, dynamic bottlenecks do and will affect network performance dramatically.