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

[Rich Brown]

On Apr 28, 2015, at 4:38 AM, Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:

> 	Well, what I want to see is a study, preferably psychophysics not modeling ;), showing the different latency “tolerances” of humans. I am certain that humans can adjust to even dozens of seconds de;ays if need be, but the goal should be fluent and seamless conversation not interleaved monologues. Thanks for giving a bound for jitter, do you have any reference for perceptional jitter thresholds or some such?

An anecdote (we don't need no stinkin' studies :-)

I frequently listen to the same interview on NPR twice: first at say, 6:20 am when the news is breaking, and then at the 8:20am rebroadcast.

The first interview is live, sometimes with significant satellite delays between the two parties. The sound quality is fine. But the pauses between question and answer (waiting for the satellite propagation) sometimes make the responder seem a little "slow witted" - as if they have to struggle to compose their response.

But the rebroadcast gets "tuned up" by NPR audio folks, and those pauses get edited out. I was amazed how the conversation takes on a completely different flavor: any negative impression goes away without that latency.

So, what lesson do I learn from this? Pure latency *does* affect the nature of the conversation - it may not be fluent and seamless if there's a satellite link's worth of latency involved. 

Although not being exhibited in this case, I can believe that jitter plays worse havoc on a conversation. I'll also bet that induced latency is a good proxy for jitter.

Rich