Determining the amount of resources that needs to be provisioned for a wired backhaul link of a wireless network using a probabilistic approach that makes the determination based at least in part on the type of coding scheme selection algorithm used to encode data transmitted by the transceiver to the wireless device over the air interface of the wireless network. Because the type of coding algorithm used depends on the amount of traffic at the air interface, variations in the coding algorithms used over a given period of time can be used to accurately determine the amount of bandwidth or resources that will be required on the backhaul link. Consequently, the amount of resources that should be provisioned for the backhaul link can be accurately determined.