diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index f66635fedcf..e5170ab7c9a 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -23,6 +23,8 @@ Release 0.19.0 - Unreleased
                should emit a sorted list of tables (Krzysztof Szlapinski via Stack)
    HBASE-884   Double and float converters for Bytes class
                (Doğacan Güney via Stack)
+   HBASE-908   Add approximate counting to CountingBloomFilter
+               (Andrzej Bialecki via Stack)
 
   NEW FEATURES
    HBASE-875   Use MurmurHash instead of JenkinsHash [in bloomfilters]
diff --git a/src/java/org/onelab/filter/CountingBloomFilter.java b/src/java/org/onelab/filter/CountingBloomFilter.java
index 9793d172004..00c346431ff 100644
--- a/src/java/org/onelab/filter/CountingBloomFilter.java
+++ b/src/java/org/onelab/filter/CountingBloomFilter.java
@@ -195,6 +195,44 @@ public final class CountingBloomFilter extends Filter {
     return true;
   }//end membershipTest()
 
+  /**
+   * This method calculates an approximate count of the key, i.e. how many
+   * times the key was added to the filter. This allows the filter to be
+   * used as an approximate <code>key -&gt; count</code> map.
+   * <p>NOTE: due to the bucket size of this filter, inserting the same
+   * key more than 15 times will cause an overflow at all filter positions
+   * associated with this key, and it will significantly increase the error
+   * rate for this and other keys. For this reason the filter can only be
+   * used to store small count values <code>0 &lt;= N &lt;&lt; 15</code>.
+   * @param key key to be tested
+   * @return 0 if the key is not present. Otherwise, a positive value v will
+   * be returned such that <code>v == count</code> with probability equal to the
+   * error rate of this filter, and <code>v &gt; count</code> otherwise.
+   * Additionally, if the filter experienced an underflow as a result of
+   * {@link #delete(Key)} operation, the return value may be lower than the
+   * <code>count</code> with the probability of the false negative rate of such
+   * filter.
+   */
+  public int approximateCount(Key key) {
+    int res = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
+    int[] h = hash.hash(key);
+    hash.clear();
+    for (int i = 0; i < nbHash; i++) {
+      // find the bucket
+      int wordNum = h[i] >> 4;          // div 16
+      int bucketShift = (h[i] & 0x0f) << 2;  // (mod 16) * 4
+      
+      long bucketMask = 15L << bucketShift;
+      long bucketValue = (buckets[wordNum] & bucketMask) >>> bucketShift;
+      if (bucketValue < res) res = (int)bucketValue;
+    }
+    if (res != Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
+      return res;
+    } else {
+      return 0;
+    }
+  }
+
   @Override
   public void not(){
     throw new UnsupportedOperationException("not() is undefined for "
diff --git a/src/test/org/onelab/test/TestFilter.java b/src/test/org/onelab/test/TestFilter.java
index e39616f0ad0..6c88c1ab33f 100644
--- a/src/test/org/onelab/test/TestFilter.java
+++ b/src/test/org/onelab/test/TestFilter.java
@@ -291,13 +291,28 @@ public class TestFilter extends TestCase {
     assertFalse(bf.membershipTest(new StringKey("xyzzy")));
     assertFalse(bf.membershipTest(new StringKey("abcd")));
     
-    // to test for overflows, add 'key' enough times to overflow an 8bit bucket,
+    // to test for overflows, add 'key' enough times to overflow a 4bit bucket,
     // while asserting that it stays a member
-    for(int i = 0; i < 257; i++){
+    for(int i = 0; i < 16; i++){
       bf.add(key);
       assertTrue(bf.membershipTest(key));
     }
-    
+    // test approximateCount
+    CountingBloomFilter bf3 = new CountingBloomFilter(4, 2, Hash.JENKINS_HASH);
+    // test the exact range
+    for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
+      bf3.add(key);
+      bf3.add(k2);
+      assertEquals(bf3.approximateCount(key), i + 1);
+      assertEquals(bf3.approximateCount(k2), i + 1);
+    }
+    // test gently degraded counting in high-fill, high error rate filter
+    for (int i = 8; i < 15; i++) {
+      bf3.add(key);
+      assertTrue(bf3.approximateCount(key) >= (i + 1));
+      assertEquals(bf3.approximateCount(k2), 8);
+      assertEquals(bf3.approximateCount(k3), 0);
+    }
   }
   
   /** Test a DynamicBloomFilter