nanog mailing list archives

Re: Network for Sale


From: Paul A Vixie <vixie () mfnx net>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:23:31 -0800


RTT doesn't drive performance, (bw*delay)-loss does.

FWIW, the heavily interactive apps are more affected by RTT than they are
by bandwidth. Network games are the new TELNET. They despise varying
latency levels, and are generally oblivious to bandwidth. Your point is
still mostly valid, in that the only thing they hate more than varying
latency is packet loss, but if the network isn't losing packets then RTT
does affect "perfomance" for the heavily interactive apps.

i wasn't talking about network performance in general.  (and i would never,
ever recommend (bw*delay)-loss as a routing metric!)  this is in the context
of so-called global server load balancing.  RTT may, or may not, matter in
the decisions such a system must make ("serve this client from which proxy?")


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