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

_______________________________________________
Bloat mailing list
Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat