It's a metric to determine if network congestion is being optimized.  Here's just one of many papers that use.  This paper says that flow controlled, per network power, can't be optimized with local information only.

Bob

On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 3:47 PM, Jeremy Harris <jgh@wizmail.org> wrote:
On 08/04/2018 06:55 PM, Bob McMahon wrote:
> FYI, I've added a netpower metric to iperf 2.
>
> Below are two runs over wired GigE comparing Google's BBR
> <https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub45646> with cubic.  Note, for the
> network power the delay units are microseconds while the throughput are
> seconds.

Why is it useful?

It appears to be calculated as bandwidth divided by latency, so the
units are bits / time^2.  The word "power" in the naming feels
misleading.
--
Cheers,
  Jeremy

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