[lug] Traceroute question

D. Stimits stimits at idcomm.com
Wed Dec 13 16:35:04 MST 2000

Deva Samartha wrote:
> But the 200 ms times are not right for a 114kb DSL, that should be in the
> 50's, unless he has a 1:5 ratio out to in.
> S

DSL gives large throughput, and traceroute says nothing about
throughput. It only tests with 3 tiny ICMP packets. 114kb is an average,
and does not include the time it takes to fill the pipe...the latency.
If I was measuring throughput in terms of cars driving from city to city
(borrowing from other posts), I could measure how fast a car gets there.
Or I could measure effectiveness by counting the number of passengers
transported over time. A porsche 930 turbo could get 3 passengers from A
to B quickly, and win one performance test...latency. A bus with 75
passengers would win the effectiveness...throughput. DSL 114kb is only a
measure of throughput; it downloads large amounts of data quickly, but a
small data packet on DSL might suck compared to a small packet on ISDN,
or even a 56k modem.

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