[178678] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Naslund, Steve)
Mon Mar 2 12:20:57 2015
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: "Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund@medline.com>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 17:20:53 +0000
In-Reply-To: <54F14868.7040903@mtcc.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
>Average !=3D Peak.
>
What is peak? There is a question for you. If we get all the way down to t=
he fundamentals of any network, peak is always 100%. There is either a bit=
on the wire or not. Your network is either 100% busy or 100% idle at any =
instantaneous moment in time. What matters is average transfer rate to the=
user experience and even that varies a lot depending on the app in questio=
n and how that app tolerates things like jitter, loss, and latency. It is =
about whether data is being buffered waiting for a transmission window and =
is the buffer being cleared as fast as it is being filled. A network is en=
gineered to support some average levels because it would be very cost ineff=
ective to engineer a wide area network to support peak transmission on all =
ports at all times. All studies of network traffic show that it is not nec=
essary to build a network that way. Our networks are statistical multiplex=
ers in their design and have been all the way back to the Bell System. You=
do know that not everyone can make a phone call at once, right (but who wo=
uld you call if everyone was already off hook, get it?)? In fact, it is su=
ch a difficult problem that it is very hard to support inside a single data=
center class Ethernet switch. In the wide area, it would be incredibly ex=
pensive to design an entirely non-blocking network at all traffic levels. =
It could be built if you want to pay for it however.
>Why is this so hard to understand?
>
>Mike
Steven Naslund
Chicago IL
