Good examples Stuart, it is quite interesting that as humanity we have not come up with aggregate term what would fairly collapse the dimensions to one single metric that would describe the snappy feeling we intuitively seek for but can not quite verbalize. Vehicles have the same issues, we have top speed (F1 at 360mph feels fast compared to Starship at 16000mph), we have acceleration (Hot-rod going 0 to 60 mph in 5 seconds feels high but pales in comparison to Tesla going 0 to 60 mph in 2 sec), we have horse powers (tractor plowing field with 300hp feels great but seems small compared to 1000hp of Hot-rod) then also there is torque (tractor with 1450 Nm of torque wins a Tesla having 900Nm on wheel while at completely different torque curve).
Capacity has the same issue as literally the truck from your example shipping magnetic tapes for "raw carry capacity" but it does not feel responsive, snappy, good to handle in the "traffic" of Internet. We have jitter, that could be compared to how a vehicle does in repeatability of track laps? We have packet loss on how the car handles on curves and does it slip off the track or on accelerations spin the wheels? Download is speed forward, upload is almost like speed at reverse gear usually far worse. Latency is like a lap track as such, depends on the track, use-case specific tests "What time did it do on Nürburgring?" or "How fast does it go from 0 to 60Mbps? Less than 200ms?". Horse power feels much like raw capacity of the HW / radio channel and techniques available beam forming, frequencies etc. what was discussed here related to Starlink and even collectively across different technologies. Speed is then instead of how much specific combination of modem and base-station combo can achieve at certain configuration? Torque feels like ability to maintain that performance, closest we get is loaded performance in context of bufferbloat?
Watching videos on Netflix require different performance characteristics than downloading a big update to Fortnite. One has certain acceleration need to have snappy user experience but focus is more on connection stability at certain bitrate. On the other hand Fortnite update you want to be delivered at brute force speeds without ruining others user experience.
Maybe we can not find that aggregate property or metric, but just need to be rigorous on making sure we accurately characterize each dimension and standardize them so the confusion and play with words, specially with marketing, get stabilized. Each needs to have standardized benchmarks much like 3D rendering benchmarks and PC perf tests are done? All that said, as I failed to come up with a perfect term, "varying performance ISP links" feels like the right thing to say? Now we have obfuscated to be able to throw any of the dimensions underneath. Only thing left for us to do is then to provide those dimensions like a nutrient labels. We are getting there? Nothing new under the sun also to some extend.
Just as a funny side note on the tractor marketing:
”Torque gives you the feeling of responsiveness and that the machine
does the right things,” Tapani Katila encapsulates his view. “The torque
is directly linked to the feeling of having power available in the
entire range of the power curve, resulting in more meaningful work.” from
https://www.agcopower.com/power-is-important-but-torque-is-crucial/Seems like some other people are also trying to figure out what dimensions to showcase to customers?
Thank you for the thought provoking examples!
Is bufferbloat property of a vehicle or characteristic of the road design? Is it a question of ICE vs EV -or- roundabout vs crossing with traffic lights? Feels more like a roundabout, no? Is this the problem behind the objections?