[Bloat] Detecting bufferbloat from outside a node

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

Neil Davies <neil.davies at pnsol.com> writes:

> You are asking about the epistemology! Good start. The only things you
> can “know” outside the node are the things you can observe. You can
> infer, from the characteristics of the observations, conformance to
> some avowed model of behaviour.

If we're going all philosophy of science on this, I'll add that the nice
thing about networking is that the computers attached to it can give us
some very specific measurements and we can (with care) provoke quite
specific behaviour to reason about the performance. Try asking a
biologist about the interactions between the life cycle of parasitic
species, their hosts and the ecosystem they live in! :)

-Toke