Understanding network degradation
Many applications rely on the internet to transport data, but some are more sensitive to poor network conditions than others. Programs that send video, for instance, or online, real-time gaming, rely on high-quality, low-latency networks. Their behavior under suboptimal conditions is vital to users’ perception of their product since network problems occur with depressing frequency. Even for applications less sensitive to network performance, such as web pages, you can check how your application responds to problems.
Sources of network degradation
There are several types of network degradation for packet-switched networks such as the internet:
- Packet loss: The classic problem of networks, where sent packets aren’t received
- Latency: The scourge of gamers is a delay between sending the packets and receiving them at the far end
- Jitter: The variation in the latency of journey times
- Re-ordering: Packets sent in one...
