It seems to me that a modern operating system, which might be used on several different networks throughout the day, and which may offer a variety of different

It seems to me that a modern operating system, which might be used on several different networks throughout the day, and which may offer a variety of different hardware configurations, should be able to provide information to applications which could be useful in calculating this sort of thing. Things like latency, typical data throughput (network and local storage), etc.