[Starlink] It's still the starlink latency...

[Eugene Chang]

It is common for a lot of business apps to be built on a web platform.
If you look at the network traffic of the web pages, there are a lot of packet exchanges for each retrieval and update of a web page. Each of these exchanges experience the latency. It makes a big difference if the latency is 20ms vs 100ms.

Subjectively, the productivity is dramatically different if the use has a snappy interaction with the web app vs one with 100-200ms. Remember, each packet exchange has this latency tax.

Quantitatively, we can look at the complexity of each web page and update. The total delay for each interaction can be computed. Some of this latency tax is why moving the web app closer to the user with a CDN helps. That part is under control of the app deployment. The poor user stuck with high latency will be penalized.

The performance penalty is not an old vs young issue. Yes some people are mentally quicker and sharper. But the latency tax is imposed on a user and it is likely the lower performance from the latency tax will be blamed on the user. As the world expands deployment to the underserved, there is very low awareness that some of these deployments have longer latency. These new network users will be penalized by the latency. Most of the world will assume they are slower because of their low digital literacy.

There is another group of people that also pay a high latency tax. Subscribers in the less wealthy sections of the city. There I see symptoms of digital redlining, less wealthy sections of the city where the network is configured to be highly oversubscribed (I say, under provisioned). These subscribers have a high latency tax. Yeah, we can blame these subscribers from less wealthy sections for being less productive because of there personal attitudes.

Sorry, this is my latency and digital equity peeve.

Gene
-----------------------------------
Eugene Chang
eugene.chang at alum.mit.edu
+1-781-799-0233 (in Honolulu)





> On Sep 28, 2022, at 11:10 PM, David Fernández via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> I made this video some time ago to illustrate the impact of latency on
> what can you achieve during a web browsing session depending on the
> latency you have, in this case MEO vs. GEO satellite connection (delay
> emulated with netem).
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEl_ud4ME4E
> 
> In the end, the latency is accumulated into a delay and it makes you
> take more time to achieve the same.
> 
> This was done in the frame of the ESA MTAILS project:
> https://artes.esa.int/projects/mtails
> 
> Off-topic: People poor performance must be first addressed, if not
> improved because of a bad attitude, then you lay off, but there is a
> whole spectrum of capabilities for people and everybody should be
> entitled to contribute as much as they can (and get a reward in
> proportion). Otherwise, nobody would employ old people or people with
> disabilities, just sharp and smart people in their thirties. Half of
> the population starts suffering cognitive decline after the age of
> 50... Very cruel.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David
> 
>> Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2022 19:59:04 +0000
>> From: Eugene Chang <eugene.chang at alum.mit.edu>
>> To: Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com>
>> Cc: Eugene Chang <eugene.chang at alum.mit.edu>, Dave Taht
>> 	<dave.taht at gmail.com>,  Dave Taht via Starlink
>> 	<starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] It's still the starlink latency...
>> Message-ID: <07C46DD5-7359-410E-8820-82B319944618 at alum.mit.edu>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> The key issue is most people don’t understand why latency matters. They
>> don’t see it or feel it’s impact.
>> 
>> First, we have to help people see the symptoms of latency and how it impacts
>> something they care about.
>> - gamers care but most people may think it is frivolous.
>> - musicians care but that is mostly for a hobby.
>> - business should care because of productivity but they don’t know how to
>> “see” the impact.
>> 
>> Second, there needs to be a “OMG, I have been seeing the action of latency
>> all this time and never knew it! I was being shafted.” Once you have this
>> awakening, you can get all the press you want for free.
>> 
>> Most of the time when business apps are developed, “we” hide the impact of
>> poor performance (aka latency) or they hide from the discussion because the
>> developers don’t have a way to fix the latency. Maybe businesses don’t care
>> because any employees affected are just considered poor performers. (In bad
>> economic times, the poor performers are just laid off.) For employees, if
>> they happen to be at a location with bad latency, they don’t know that
>> latency is hurting them. Unfair but most people don’t know the issue is
>> latency.
>> 
>> Talking and explaining why latency is bad is not as effective as showing why
>> latency is bad. Showing has to be with something that has a person impact.
>> 
>> Gene
>> -----------------------------------
>> Eugene Chang
>> eugene.chang at alum.mit.edu
>> +1-781-799-0233 (in Honolulu)
>> 
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