Impact of Packet Loss and Delay

Packet Loss vs Delay I was troubleshooting a problem with a client while teaching a class and we got into a discussion of what is worse; packet delay or packet loss. I had to go with the standard consulting response of, “it depends”. Really, it does depend on many factors such as; network latency, application or protocol behavior, etc. I suggested why not take some basic network latency measurements, use a network emulator and see what the impact is. The analysts I was working with complained that, “we don’t have time for this”. I told them that this will easily take less than an hour to figure out and we were in class, so we actually have the time at the moment. I happen to have an Apposite Linktropy Mini2 WAN (http://www.apposite-tech.com/products/mini2.html ) Emulator since I was teaching a class that morning, setup a quick lab and we got some results within a half an hour. We used iperf as an easy way to test but can easily retest using any other application. Even though we recorded Jitter and loss, I won’t be reviewing those results.

read the rest of this article on network computing when its posted http://www.networkcomputing.com/author/35783423 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPdoiawK1J0