[Starlink] On metrics

[rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon@rjmcmahon.com>]

Hi All,

It seems getting the metrics right is critical. Our industry can't be 
reporting things that mislead or misassign blame. The medical community 
doesn't treat people for cancer without having a high degree they've 
gotten the diagnostics correct as an example.

An initial metric, per this group, would be geared towards 
responsiveness or the speed of causality. Here, we may need to include 
linear distance, the power required to achieve a responsiveness and to 
take account of Pareto efficiencies, where one device's better 
responsiveness can't make another's worse.

An example per a possible FiWi new & comprehensive metric: A rating 
could be something like 10K responses per second at 1Km terrestrial 
(fiber) cable / 6m radius free space range / 5W total / 0-impact to 
others. If consumers can learn to read nutrition labels they can also 
learn to read these.

Maybe a device produces a scan code qr based upon its e3e measurement 
and the scan code qr loads a page with human interpretable analysis? 
Similar to how we now pull up menus on our mobile phones listing the 
food items and the nutrition information that's available to seat at a 
table. Then, in a perfect world, there is a rating per each link hop or 
better, network jurisdiction. Each jurisdiction could decide if they 
want to participate or not, similar to connecting up an autonomous 
system or not. I think measurements of network jurisdictions without 
prior agreements are unfair. The lack of measurement capability is 
likely enough pressure needed to motivate actions.

Bob

PS. As a side note, and a shameless plug, iperf 2 now supports 
bounceback and a big issue has been clock sync for one way delays (OWD.) 
Per a comment from Jean Tourrhiles 
https://sourceforge.net/p/iperf2/tickets/242/ I added some unsync 
detections in the bounceback measurements. Contact me directly if your 
engineering team needs more information on iperf 2.