[Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople

[Jonathan Foulkes]

Hi Jason,

I’ve found that idle is a good descriptor for unloaded metrics, and for semi-technical audiences ‘working’ is a very good term. But for lay people, the term ‘loaded’ seems to work better, especially since we are talking about a metric that relates to capacity.

e.g.

When my truck is unloaded, my truck stops quickly, but when loaded, it takes longer to stop.

so now:

When my Internet line is unloaded, my latency is low, but when it is highly loaded (iCloud photo sync), the latency is very high.

Cheers,

Jonathan Foulkes


> On May 4, 2021, at 8:02 PM, Livingood, Jason via Bloat <bloat at 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
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