Course lecture: Introduction to network latency

A video explaining internet latency

The video is produced by the EU FP7 project RITE, which targeted the reduction of internet transport latency. It gives an introduction into the biggest sources of Internet latency and emphasizes the difference between bandwidth and latency.

Related readings

Historically, the communications industry and research and development within computer networking as a whole has had a strong focus on increasing data rates. This does not mean that no one within industry and the research community has understood the importance of latency. Here is an early writing on the subject by Stuart Cheshire, Networking DEST (Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, Technologist) at Apple:  It’s the Latency, Stupid. While some of the numbers are severly outdated, the basic principles still apply. (No mandatory readings for this part.)

Bufferbloat community

The term “bufferbloat” was coined by Jim Gettys in late 2010, one of the founders behind the Bufferbloat community which has been driving much of the work on reducing latency over the last years. The bufferbloat.net site contains various projects and other resources related to latency.

From our collaborators

An interview with Toke Høiland-Jørgensen, Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, on the importance of latency and how to reduce it. The interview touches on all the main topics covered in the course.