it's sometimesworth reminding technical folks that if you look at a small enough 
time slice, a network is either 0% or 100% utilized, so if the output is 100% 
utilized the instant a packet arrives, the device ither dropps the data or 
buffers it.

David Lang

  On Thu, 6 May 2021, Jason Iannone wrote:

> 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
>>
>