RE: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

["Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund () medline com>]

> Average != Peak.

What is peak?  There is a question for you. If we get all the way down to the 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 question 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 engineered to support some average levels because it would be very cost ineffective 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 necessary to build a network that way.  Our networks are statistical multiplexers 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 would you 
call if everyone was already off hook, get it?)?  In fact, it is such 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 expensive 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