[Bloat] PhD thesis with results related to buffering needs on variable-capacity links

[Bjørn Ivar Teigen]

Hi Michael,

On Tue, 3 Jan 2023 at 16:08, Michael Richardson <mcr at sandelman.ca> wrote:

>
> Thank you for sharing your thesis!
>
> Bjørn Ivar Teigen via Bloat wrote:
>     > The thesis begins by investigating which performance issues are most
>     > prevalent in today's WiFi networks. We show that both queuing latency
>     > and the WiFi protocol specification itself are significant
>     > contributors. By building a model of the WiFi protocol behavior we
>     > quantify the performance of the protocol in terms of quality
>     > attenuation. We find that significant performance variability is an
>     > inherent consequence of the protocol design.
>
> I guess that your thesis is mostly technical.
> (I haven't clicked on the link yet)
>
You are right. It is focused on analyzing models of the WiFi MAC layer to
calculate how good (or bad!) latency and packet loss gets in various
scenarios, and how that latency and packet loss in turn affects congestion
control algorithms.

>
> I wonder if there is work that might occur from the business department end
> of things.  Why do we have 15 years of WiFi optimization, which seem to be
> taking us further away from low latency.  Are the new protocols actually
> improving the situation for the end consumer?  My impression is no.
> Nobody notices because the quality is so unpredictable.
>

Through my work in Domos I have at least some insight into this. My
impression is that it starts with business decisions, where the focus has
been on maximum throughput numbers because that's what consumers think they
want. It also takes effort, focus, and (most importantly) money to remove
bufferbloat, so unless there is sufficient incentives from the commercial
side of things it doesn't happen.
I do think there is increasing awareness of latency (under load) as an
important factor for user experience. We certainly see that from some of
the (dare I say thought-leading) ISPs we're working with.

I think there's hope we will see more good low-latency solutions deployed
in the near future.

Cheers,
-- 
Bjørn Ivar Teigen
Head of Research
+47 47335952 | bjorn at domos.no <name at domos.no> | www.domos.no
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