Characteristics of communication links

Skills: none
IT concepts: data transmission rate, latency,
jitter, packet loss, medium
Characteristics of communication links
• Internet concepts
– Applications
– Technology (connectivity)
– Implications for
• Individuals
• Organizations
• Society

• Internet skills
– Application development
– Content creation
• Text
• Image
• Audio
• Video
 Link characteristics

1. Speed
2. Latency
3. Jitter
4. Packet loss rate
5. Medium
Do you know the speed of the link
between your home and your ISP?

Home LAN

The Internet
LAN router
ISP router
 What is the unit of measure for data
transmission speed?
Measure of Example units Rate ratio

Distance Inches, miles, light

years
Rate of movement Miles/hour, Distance/time
inches/year
Weight Ounces, tons, grams

Amount of data Bits, bytes, gigabytes

Rate of data ? ?
transmission
 What is the unit of measure for data
transmission speed?
Measure of Example units Rate ratio

Distance Inches, miles, light

years
Rate of movement Miles/hour, Distance/time
inches/year
Weight Ounces, tons, grams

Amount of data Bits, bytes, gigabytes

Rate of data Bits/second, Amount of data/time

transmission bytes/second,
gigabits/second
Verizon Internet plans, November 2009

Plan Speed down Speed up Price

Starter DSL 1 Mbps 384 Kbps $19.99
Power DSL 3 Mbps 768 Kbps $29.99
Turbo DSL 7.1 Mbps 768 Kbps $42.99
FIOS fast 15 Mbps 5 Mbps $49.99
FIOS faster 25 Mbps 15 Mbps $64.99
FIOS fastest 50 Mbps 20 Mbps $144.99

Note that speeds are “up to” these rates.

Note the asymmetry in upload and download speed.

 Prefixes for large quantities

Prefix Exact Close enough Name

Kilo 1,024 1,000 Thousand
Mega 1,024^2 1,000,000 Million
Giga 1,024^3 1,000,000,000 Billion
Tera 1,024^4 1,000,000,000,000 Trillion
Peta 1,024^5 1,000,000,000,000,000 Quadrillion

After these prefixes come exa, zetta and yotta. The

pattern continues -- each is 1,024 times the previous one.
Availability of 100 Mbps service in 2009

Follow this link for 100 Mbps cost.

 Latency – the time for the first packet to
arrive

About half the ping (round trip) time

Jitter – variation in latency
 Ping time and jitter from Los Angeles

Distance P1 P2 P3 P4 Avg. Jitter

(miles) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (ms) (st dev)
Santiago
Chile 5,585 412 346 228 225 303 92.08
Oxford
England 5,408 195 194 195 193 194 .96
 Packet loss rate

No packets lost -- packet loss is rare, but occurs

Packet loss rate from SLAC (Palo Alto, CA)

• Steady improvement everywhere but Africa

• All regions but Africa an parts of Asia are now under 1%
Current year data on Verizon backbone
latency, packet loss rate and jitter

http://www.verizonbusiness.com/about/network/latency/
Transfer rate from SLAC (Palo Alto, CA)
 Link medium
Copper, twisted pair

Copper, coaxial cable

Fiber

Terrestrial radio

Satellite radio
We just covered five characteristics of a
communication link. Do you recall what they were?