[Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople

[john]

Hello,
I have been on this mailing list since March this year. I am one of the 
laypeople who is very interested in bufferbloat and have been trying to 
understand what the bufferbloat actually is by reading your email 
exchanges.

I was very happy when the subject: [Bloat] Questions for Bufferbloat 
Wikipedia article, came up. I thought someone could finally explain it 
with very easy word which I could understand. But the more discussion 
goes on the more I got confused and I thought this mailing list is for 
aliens exchanging idea not for me human.
:-)

I also watched Dave's
Making Wifi Fast + Slides - BattleMeshV8 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb-UnHDw02o&t=1657s
But I still could not really understand exactly what Dave was trying to 
explain in it.

Then, another subject: [Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople, came up. I 
thought I could finally understand what the bufferbloat is. But so far I 
am not even close to the understanding. Now it seems to me that this 
mailing list is only for Albert Einstein class scientists to discuss 
something super difficult to understand. This is because no one seems to 
be able to explain in a manner laypeople can understand. Or probably my 
effort to understand it is not really enough yet. But I think I have 
been really doing my best trying to understand what all of you are 
trying to explain about.

I thought I could not be qualified to even drop a line to this mailing 
list because I can not write nor explain in the manner others on this 
mailinglist do. I have been hesitating to ask a question. But please 
allow me to share with you what image came up in my mind after reading 
all the Emails exchanged here since March.

As of now, I am wondering if the bufferbloat could be explained with 
something like a sushi belt-conveyor, the one you may find at the sushi 
restaurant equipped with automated belt-conveyor to bring plates with 
sushi to customer's seat.

In my mind, I am seeing the plate as a packet and the conveyor as 
network. For Europeans and Americans, it may be easier to picture the 
KrispyKreme's donuts belt conveyor in mind instead of sushi one.  Donuts 
are the packets and they go around the network on conveyor in my mind.

After watching Dave's YouTube video, it seems to me, the congestion of 
the packets which Dave was explaining is equivalent to sushi plats on 
conveyor stuck on the route and colliding each other on the conveyor 
since the conveyor keeps bringing more packets one after another to the 
collision point, then plats overflow from the conveyor and dropped on 
the floor.

So now, my question is the picture I described above is close to what 
bufferbloat is? Or I am still very far from understanding? If I am still 
far from understanding, will you be able to explain it to me, the 
laypeople, using the sushi or donuts conveyor? Is the problem the speed 
adjustment of the conveyor? Or too many plates or donuts are placed on 
the conveyor? If so, why the rate or speed of each factors can not be 
adjusted? I even wonder if you could explain it using the door to door 
package delivery service since you are talking about delivering packets.

By the way, thank you very much for your effort to make the explanation 
of bufferbloat to laypeople!

john




--------- Original Message ----------
Subject:  Re: [Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople
From:     Dave Collier-Brown <davecb.42 at gmail.com>
To:       bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
Cc:       
Date:     Wed, 12 May 2021 17:51:16 -0400

"lag" is often understood by non-technical folks, as in "the lag between 
the time you step on the gas and the time the car actually speeds up".
Some folks who've been exposed to video enough will know about "lag and 
jitter" (;-))

--dave 
On 2021-05-12 11:50 a.m., Ingemar Johansson S via Bloat wrote:
>  Hi

Yes. "Idle latency"  and "Working latency" make sense.

Note however that if you think of idle latency as sparse ping, then 
these sparse ping can give unreasonably high values over cellular access 
(4G/5G). The reason is here mainly DRX which is a battery saving 
function in mobile devices. More frequent pings like every 20ms over the 
course of 100ms or so can give more correct values.

/Ingemar


 Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 21:26:21 +0000
From: Greg White <g.white at CableLabs.com>
To: Jonathan Foulkes <jf at jonathanfoulkes.com> , "Livingood, Jason"
	<Jason_Livingood at comcast.com>
Cc: bloat <bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Bloat] Terminology for Laypeople
Message-ID: <0A5DF790-7A71-4B84-A20B-559A5E0CE65F at cablelabs.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

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


 

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David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-brown at indexexchange.com |              -- Mark Twain 
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