[e2e] Internet packet loss rates

[L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk]

David P. Reed wrote:
> Without usage statistics for the same period, and knowledge
> of the queueing parameters of packet switches in paths, what
> can one say?

Perhaps one can construct something like the fantasy built on
http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2009-September/007742.html
based on a single sample set?

> It would be entirely shaped by your fantasy of what the system did.
>
> And in this case, YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH!

Well, yes. But what's wrong with speculation based on evidence?

"Measurements are never perfect, but that doesn't mean they can't tell us 
a lot." -- D. P. Reed, 7 Sep 2009.

-----Original Message-----
From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org [mailto:end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of David P. Reed 
Sent: 05 April 2010 17:24
To: Cottrell, Les; Jasleen Kaur; Paul D. Amer
Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
Subject: Re: [e2e] Internet packet loss rates

Given that internet packets are lost by a process that is not primarily associated with path, but with usage by others, such numbers may be nearly meaning-free. Without usage statistics for the same period, and knowledge of the queueing parameters of packet switches in paths, what can one say?

If you got a data sequence that looked like the first million bits of pi, but had no access to know what process purported to generate those drops, what value would those bits have?

It would be entirely shaped by your fantasy of what the system did.

And in this case, YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH!

"Cottrell, Les" <cottrell at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

>Though not a study there is a lot of data on Internet Packet losses going back over 12 years in the PingER project (see the site map at http://www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/). In this about 40 monitoring stations in about 15 countries monitor every 30 mins the ping RTTs, losses, jitter etc. to over 700 sites in over 150 countries. The analyzed data is available and downloadable from http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/pingtable.pl. From this form you can choose your metric the sources of the pings, the destination, the aggregation time as well as various affinity groups for aggregation. 
>
>Bear in mind that since only 10 pings are done each 30 mins, even aggregating over 1 year (48 measurement intervals of 30 mins each / day * 365 days) ping loss rates of less than 1  in 175K cannot be observed. However, the losses are good for developing nations.
>
>A recent report at 
>http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan10/report-jan1
>0.doc does include some analysis of losses (see Fig 7). Earlier reports 
>had more information on losses, see Figs 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in 
>http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/icfa/icfa-net-paper-jan09/report-jan0
>9.doc
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org [mailto:end2end-interest- 
>> bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of Jasleen Kaur
>> Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 7:26 PM
>> To: Paul D. Amer
>> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
>> Subject: Re: [e2e] Internet packet loss rates
>> 
>> 
>> Paul,
>> 
>> Our 2007 paper on TCP loss detection/recovery mechanisms includes 
>> statistics on loss rates (observed passively) in nearly 3 million 
>> Internet TCP transfers:
>> 
>> S. Rewaskar, J. Kaur, and F.D. Smith, "A Performance Study of Loss 
>> Detection/Recovery in Real-world TCP Implementations"
>> <http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Ejasleen/papers/icnp07.pdf>, in Proceedings 
>> of the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP'07), 
>> Beijing, China, Oct 2007.
>> 
>> - Jasleen
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Paul D. Amer wrote:
>> > Does anyone know of recent studies empirically measuring Internet 
>> > packet loss rates/distributions?
>> > Thanks,
>> > Paul Amer
>> > Univ of Delaware
>> >
>