It's not a short discussion but I start with a comparison of circuit and
packet switching, usually with an accompanying drawing. There's a physicist
joke in here about assuming a frictionless environment but for the intent
of this explanation, a circuit switched path is bufferless because circuit
switched networks are point to point and bits are transmitted at the same
rate that they are received. Packet switching introduces a mechanism for
nodes supporting multiple ingress, single egress transmission. In order to
support transient bursts, network nodes hold onto bits for a time while the
egress interface processes the node's ingress traffic. That hold time
equates to additional latency. Every node in a path may subject a flow's
traffic to buffering, increasing latency in transit based on its individual
load.

Jason

On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 8:02 PM Livingood, Jason via Bloat <
bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Like many of you I have been immersed in buffer bloat discussions for many
> years, almost entirely within the technical community. Now that I am
> starting to explain latency & latency under load to internal non-technical
> folks, I have noticed some people don’t really understand “traditional”
> latency vs. latency under load (LUL).
>
>
>
> As a result, I am planning to experiment in some upcoming briefings and
> call traditional latency “idle latency” – a measure of latency conducted on
> an otherwise idle connection. And then try calling LUL either “active
> latency” or perhaps “working latency” (suggested by an external colleague –
> can’t take credit for that one) – to try to communicate it is latency when
> the connection is experiencing normal usage.
>
>
>
> Have any of you here faced similar challenges explaining this to
> non-technical audiences? Have you had any success with alternative terms?
> What do you think of these?
>
>
>
> Thanks for any input,
>
> Jason
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