[Bloat] DSLReports Speed Test has latency measurement built-in

Dave Taht dave.taht at gmail.com
Tue Apr 28 10:02:42 EDT 2015 

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:18 AM, Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
> On Apr 27, 2015, at 18:39 , Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 11:03 PM, Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> Hi Simon, hi List
>>>
>>> On Apr 25, 2015, at 06:26 , Simon Barber <simon at superduper.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Certainly the VoIP numbers are for peak total latency, and while Justin is measuring total latency because he is only taking a few samples the peak values will be a little higher.
>>>
>>>        If your voip number are for peak total latency they need literature citations to back them up, as they are way shorter than what the ITU recommends for one-way-latency (see ITU-T G.114, Fig. 1). I am not "married” to the ITU numbers but I think we should use generally accepted numbers here and not bake our own thresholds (and for all I know your numbers are fine, I just don’t know where they are coming from ;) )
>>
>> At one level I am utterly prepared to set new (And lower) standards
>> for latency, and not necessarily pay attention to compromise driven
>> standards processes established in the 70s and 80s, but to the actual
>> user experience numbers that jim cited in the fq+aqm manefesto on his
>> blog.
>
>         I am not sure I git the right one, could you please post a link to the document you are referring to?

I tend to refer to this as the fq+aqm "manifesto":

https://gettys.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/low-latency-requires-smart-queuing-traditional-aqm-is-not-enough/

Although jim takes too long to get to the fq portion of it. This was
because the uphill battle with the ietf was all about e2e vs aqm
techniques with FQ hardly on the table at all when we started.

Also I view many of the numbers he cited as *outer bounds* for
latency. While some might claim a band can make good music with 30ms
latency, I generally have to stay within 8 feet or less of the
drummer....

>My personal issue with new standards is that it is going to be harder to convince others that these are real and not simply selected to push our agenda., hence using other peoples numbers, preferably numbers backed up by research ;)

Sebastian pointed out to me privately about the old ATM dispute:

        "The way I heard the story, it was France pushing for 32 bytes
as this would allow a national net without the need for echo
cancelation, while the US already required echo cancelation and wanted
64 bytes. In true salomonic fashion 48 bytes was selected, pleasing no
one ;) (see http://cntic03.hit.bme.hu/meres/ATMFAQ/d7.htm). Nice
story."

>I also note that in the ITU numbers I dragged into the discussion the measurement pretends to be mouth to ear (one way) delay, so for intermediate buffering the thresholds need to be lower to allow for sampling interval (I think typically 10ms for the usual codecs G.711 and G.722), further sender processing and receiver processing, so I guess for the ITU thresholds we should subtract say 30ms for processing and then doube it to go from one-way delay to RTT. Now I am amazed how large the resulting RTTs actually are, so I assume I need to scrutinize the psycophysics experiments that hopefully underlay those numbers...

The analogy I use when discussing this with people in the real world,
goes like this: "Here we are discussing this around a lunch table. a
single millisecond is about a foot, and I am about 3 feet from you, so
the ideal latency for conversation is much, much less than the maximum
laid out by multiple standards for voice. Shall we try to have this
conversation from 30ms/feet apart?"

Less latency = more intimacy. How many here have had a whispered
conversation into a lover's ear? Would it have been anywhere near as
good if you were across the hall?

Far be it for me to project internet latency reductions as being key
to achieving world peace and better mutual understanding[1], but this
simple comparison of real world latencies to established standards
makes a ton of sense to me and everyone I have tried this comparison
on.

The existing standards for voice were driven by what was achievable at
the time, more than they were driven by psychoacoustics. I am glad
that the opus voice codec can get as low as 2.7ms latency, and sad
that we have to capture whole frames (~16ms) nowadays for video.
Perhaps we will see scanline video grabbers re-emerge as a viable
videoconferencing tool one day.

>
>>
>> I consider induced latencies of 30ms as a "green" band because that is
>> the outer limit of the range modern aqm technologies can achieve (fq
>> can get closer to 0). There was a lot of debate about 20ms being the
>> right figure for induced latency and/or jitter, a year or two back,
>> and we settled on 30ms for both, so that number is already a
>> compromise figure.
>
>         Ah, I think someone brought this up already, do we need to make allowances for slow links? If a full packet traversal is already 16ms can we really expect 30ms? And should we even care, I mean, a slow link is a slow link and will have some drawbacks maybe we should just expose those instead of rationalizing them away? On the other hand I tend to think that in the end it is all about the cumulative performance of the link for most users, i.e. if the link allows glitch-free voip while heavy up- and downloads go on, normal users should not care one iota what the induced latency actually is (aqm or no aqm as long as the link behaves well nothing needs changing)
>
>>
>> It is highly likely that folk here are not aware of the extra-ordinary
>> amount of debate that went into deciding the ultimate ATM cell size
>> back in the day. The eu wanted 32 bytes, the US 48, both because that
>> was basically a good size for the local continental distance and echo
>> cancellation stuff, at the time.
>>
>> In the case of voip, jitter is actually more important than latency.
>> Modern codecs and coding techniques can tolerate 30ms of jitter, just
>> barely, without sound artifacts. >60ms, boom, crackle, hiss.
>
>         Ah, and here is were I understand why my simplistic model from above fails; induced latency will contribute significantly to jitter and hence is a good proxy for link-suitability for real-time applications. So I agree using the induced latency as measure to base the color bands from sounds like a good approach.

Yea! Let's do that!

[1] http://the-edge.blogspot.com/2003_07_27_the-edge_archive.html#105975402040143728
>
>
>>
>>
>>> Best Regards
>>>        Sebastian
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Simon
>>>>
>>>> Sent with AquaMail for Android
>>>> http://www.aqua-mail.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On April 24, 2015 9:04:45 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> simon all your numbers are too large by at least a factor of 2. I
>>>>> think also you are thinking about total latency, rather than induced
>>>>> latency and jitter.
>>>>>
>>>>> Please see my earlier email laying out the bands. And gettys' manifesto.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are thinking in terms of voip, less than 30ms *jitter* is what
>>>>> you want, and a latency increase of 30ms is a proxy for also holding
>>>>> jitter that low.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 8:15 PM, Simon Barber <simon at superduper.net> wrote:
>>>>>> I think it might be useful to have a 'latency guide' for users. It would say
>>>>>> things like
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 100ms - VoIP applications work well
>>>>>> 250ms - VoIP applications - conversation is not as natural as it could be,
>>>>>> although users may not notice this.
>>>
>>>        The only way to detect whether a conversation is natural is if users notice, I would say...
>>>
>>>>>> 500ms - VoIP applications begin to have awkward pauses in conversation.
>>>>>> 1000ms - VoIP applications have significant annoying pauses in conversation.
>>>>>> 2000ms - VoIP unusable for most interactive conversations.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 0-50ms - web pages load snappily
>>>>>> 250ms - web pages can often take an extra second to appear, even on the
>>>>>> highest bandwidth links
>>>>>> 1000ms - web pages load significantly slower than they should, taking
>>>>>> several extra seconds to appear, even on the highest bandwidth links
>>>>>> 2000ms+ - web browsing is heavily slowed, with many seconds or even 10s of
>>>>>> seconds of delays for pages to load, even on the highest bandwidth links.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Gaming.... some kind of guide here....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Simon
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 4/24/2015 1:55 AM, Sebastian Moeller wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Toke,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:29 , Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke at toke.dk> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> writes:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I know this is not perfect and the numbers will probably require
>>>>>>>>> severe "bike-shedding”
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Since you're literally asking for it... ;)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In this case we're talking about *added* latency. So the ambition should
>>>>>>>> be zero, or so close to it as to be indiscernible. Furthermore, we know
>>>>>>>> that proper application of a good queue management algorithm can keep it
>>>>>>>> pretty close to this. Certainly under 20-30 ms of added latency. So from
>>>>>>>> this, IMO the 'green' or 'excellent' score should be from zero to 30 ms.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>        Oh, I can get behind that easily, I just thought basing the limits
>>>>>>> on externally relevant total latency thresholds would directly tell the user
>>>>>>> which applications might run well on his link. Sure this means that people
>>>>>>> on a satellite link most likely will miss out the acceptable voip threshold
>>>>>>> by their base-latency alone, but guess what telephony via satellite leaves
>>>>>>> something to be desired. That said if the alternative is no telephony I
>>>>>>> would take 1 second one-way delay any day ;).
>>>>>>>        What I liked about fixed thresholds is that the test would give a
>>>>>>> good indication what kind of uses are going to work well on the link under
>>>>>>> load, given that during load both base and induced latency come into play. I
>>>>>>> agree that 300ms as first threshold is rather unambiguous though (and I am
>>>>>>> certain that remote X11 will require a massively lower RTT unless one likes
>>>>>>> to think of remote desktop as an oil tanker simulator ;) )
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The other increments I have less opinions about, but 100 ms does seem to
>>>>>>>> be a nice round number, so do yellow from 30-100 ms, then start with the
>>>>>>>> reds somewhere above that, and range up into the deep red / purple /
>>>>>>>> black with skulls and fiery death as we go nearer and above one second?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I very much think that raising peoples expectations and being quite
>>>>>>>> ambitious about what to expect is an important part of this. Of course
>>>>>>>> the base latency is going to vary, but the added latency shouldn't. And
>>>>>>>> sine we have the technology to make sure it doesn't, calling out bad
>>>>>>>> results when we see them is reasonable!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>        Okay so this would turn into:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> base latency to base latency + 30 ms:                           green
>>>>>>> base latency + 31 ms to base latency + 100 ms:          yellow
>>>>>>> base latency + 101 ms to base latency + 200 ms:         orange?
>>>>>>> base latency + 201 ms to base latency + 500 ms:         red
>>>>>>> base latency + 501 ms to base latency + 1000 ms:        fire
>>>>>>> base latency + 1001 ms to infinity:
>>>>>>> fire & brimstone
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> correct?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -Toke
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>> Bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dave Täht
>>>>> Open Networking needs **Open Source Hardware**
>>>>>
>>>>> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EricRaymond/posts/JqxCe2pFr67
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Bloat mailing list
>>>> Bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dave Täht
>> Open Networking needs **Open Source Hardware**
>>
>> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EricRaymond/posts/JqxCe2pFr67
>



-- 
Dave Täht
Open Networking needs **Open Source Hardware**

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EricRaymond/posts/JqxCe2pFr67

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