[Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople

[Greg White]

I recently heard Stuart Cheshire (sort of tongue-in-cheek) refer to “idle latency” as “the latency that users experience when they are not using their internet connection” (or something along those lines).

I think terminology that reinforces that the baseline (unloaded) latency is not always what users experience, and that latency under load is not referring to some unusual corner-case situation, is good.  So, I like “idle latency” and “working latency”.

-Greg



From: Bloat <bloat-bounces at lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of Jonathan Foulkes <jf at jonathanfoulkes.com>
Date: Monday, May 10, 2021 at 2:10 PM
To: Jason Livingood <Jason_Livingood at comcast.com>
Cc: bloat <bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople

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<mailto: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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