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Network performance refers to measures of service quality of a network as seen by the customer. There are many different ways to measure the performance of a network, as each network is different in nature and design. Performance can also be modeled and simulated instead of measured; one example of this is using state transition diagrams to model queuing performance or to use a Network Simulator.


Performance measures

The following measures are often considered important: * Bandwidth commonly measured in bits/second is the maximum rate that information can be transferred * Throughput is the actual rate that information is transferred * Latency the delay between the sender and the receiver decoding it, this is mainly a function of the signals travel time, and processing time at any nodes the information traverses * Jitter variation in packet delay at the receiver of the information * Error rate the number of corrupted bits expressed as a percentage or fraction of the total sent


Bandwidth

The available channel bandwidth and achievable signal-to-noise ratio determine the maximum possible throughput. It is not generally possible to send more data than dictated by the Shannon-Hartley Theorem.


Throughput

''Throughput'' is the number of messages successfully delivered per unit time. Throughput is controlled by available bandwidth, as well as the available signal-to-noise ratio and hardware limitations. Throughput for the purpose of this article will be understood to be measured from the arrival of the first bit of data at the receiver, to decouple the concept of throughput from the concept of latency. For discussions of this type, the terms 'throughput' and 'bandwidth' are often used interchangeably. The ''Time Window'' is the period over which the throughput is measured. The choice of an appropriate time window will often dominate calculations of throughput, and whether latency is taken into account or not will determine whether the latency affects the throughput or not.


Latency

The
speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit fo ...
imposes a minimum propagation time on all electromagnetic signals. It is not possible to reduce the latency below :t=s/c_m where s is the distance and cm is the speed of light in the medium (roughly 200,000 km/s for most
fiber Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorpora ...
or
electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...
media, depending on their velocity factor). This approximately means an additional millisecond round-trip delay (RTT) per 100 km (or 62 miles) of distance between hosts. Other delays also occur in intermediate nodes. In packet switched networks delays can occur due to queueing.


Jitter

Jitter is the undesired deviation from true periodicity of an assumed periodic
signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...
in
electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
and
telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...
, often in relation to a reference clock source. Jitter may be observed in characteristics such as the
frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from '' angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is ...
of successive pulses, the signal
amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of a ...
, or phase of periodic signals. Jitter is a significant, and usually undesired, factor in the design of almost all communications links (e.g., USB, PCI-e,
SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host adapter, host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) ...
, OC-48). In
clock recovery In serial communication of digital data, clock recovery is the process of extracting timing information from a serial data stream itself, allowing the timing of the data in the stream to be accurately determined without separate clock information. ...
applications it is called ''timing jitter''. Wolaver, 1991, p.211


Error rate

In digital transmission, the number of bit errors is the number of received
bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented a ...
s of a
data stream In connection-oriented communication, a data stream is the transmission of a sequence of digitally encoded coherent signals to convey information. Typically, the transmitted symbols are grouped into a series of packets. Data streaming has ...
over a
communication channel A communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking. A channel is used for inform ...
that have been altered due to
noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
, interference,
distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio s ...
or bit synchronization errors. The bit error rate or bit error ratio (BER) is the number of bit errors divided by the total number of transferred bits during a studied time interval. BER is a unitless performance measure, often expressed as a
percentage In mathematics, a percentage (from la, per centum, "by a hundred") is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. It is often denoted using the percent sign, "%", although the abbreviations "pct.", "pct" and sometimes "pc" are also ...
. The bit error probability ''pe'' is the expectation value of the BER. The BER can be considered as an approximate estimate of the bit error probability. This estimate is accurate for a long time interval and a high number of bit errors.


Interplay of factors

All of the factors above, coupled with user requirements and user perceptions, play a role in determining the perceived 'fastness' or utility, of a network connection. The relationship between throughput, latency, and user experience is most aptly understood in the context of a shared network medium, and as a scheduling problem.


Algorithms and protocols

For some systems, latency and throughput are coupled entities. In TCP/IP, latency can also directly affect throughput. In
TCP TCP may refer to: Science and technology * Transformer coupled plasma * Tool Center Point, see Robot end effector Computing * Transmission Control Protocol, a fundamental Internet standard * Telephony control protocol, a Bluetooth communication s ...
connections, the large bandwidth-delay product of high latency connections, combined with relatively small TCP window sizes on many devices, effectively causes the throughput of a high latency connection to drop sharply with latency. This can be remedied with various techniques, such as increasing the TCP congestion window size, or more drastic solutions, such as packet coalescing, TCP acceleration, and
forward error correction In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...
, all of which are commonly used for high latency satellite links. TCP acceleration converts the TCP packets into a stream that is similar to UDP. Because of this, the TCP acceleration software must provide its own mechanisms to ensure the reliability of the link, taking the latency and bandwidth of the link into account, and both ends of the high latency link must support the method used. In the Media Access Control (MAC) layer, performance issues such as throughput and end-to-end delay are also addressed.


Examples of latency or throughput dominated systems

Many systems can be characterized as dominated either by throughput limitations or by latency limitations in terms of end-user utility or experience. In some cases, hard limits such as the speed of light present unique problems to such systems and nothing can be done to correct this. Other systems allow for significant balancing and optimization for best user experience.


Satellite

A telecom satellite in geosynchronous orbit imposes a path length of at least 71000 km between transmitter and receiver. which means a minimum delay between message request and message receipt, or latency of 473 ms. This delay can be very noticeable and affects satellite phone service regardless of available throughput capacity.


Deep space communication

These long path length considerations are exacerbated when communicating with space probes and other long-range targets beyond Earth's atmosphere. The
Deep Space Network The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of American spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetar ...
implemented by NASA is one such system that must cope with these problems. Largely latency driven, the GAO has criticized the current architecture. Several different methods have been proposed to handle the intermittent connectivity and long delays between packets, such as
delay-tolerant networking Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) is an approach to computer network architecture that seeks to address the technical issues in heterogeneous networks that may lack continuous network connectivity. Examples of such networks are those operating in mo ...
.Kevin Fall, 2003


Even deeper space communication

At interstellar distances, the difficulties in designing radio systems that can achieve any throughput at all are massive. In these cases, maintaining communication is a bigger issue than how long that communication takes.


Offline data transport

Transportation is concerned almost entirely with throughput, which is why physical deliveries of backup tape archives are still largely done by vehicle.


See also

* Bitrate * Measuring network throughput *
Network traffic measurement In computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management. Techniques Network performance cou ...
*
Response time Response time may refer to: *The time lag between an electronic input and the output signal which depends upon the value of passive components used. *Responsiveness, how quickly an interactive system responds to user input *Response time (biology) ...


Notes


References

* * * Fall, Kevin
"A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets"
Intel Corporation, February, 2003, Doc No: IRB-TR-03-003 *Government Accountability Office (GAO) report 06-445, NASA'S DEEP SPACE NETWORK: Current Management Structure is Not Conducive to Effectively Matching Resources with Future Requirements, April 27, 2006


External links


NASA's Deep Space Network Website


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