Measuring Quality; Managing Experience
WELCOME to BLOG 6 in our series: KNOWLEDGE BYTES. These blogs will cover networking, security, or general IT concepts to help facilitate the understanding of best practices, to guide you in selecting the right solutions to meet network challenges, or simply to feed your curiosity.
Poor network quality can be incredibly frustrating. From credit card transactions timing out and failed emails to choppy voice calls, long loading times, dropped calls, or constant buffering, experiencing these issues can test anyone’s patience.
Unless you’re Lorelai Gilmore:
"Well, we like our Internet slow, okay? We can turn it on, walk around, do a little dance, make a sandwich. With DSL, no dancing, no walking, and we'd starve!"
Those were the days—or not. This quote may have aged poorly. But I digress.
Today, the integral role of Internet access in our daily lives makes such frustrations all too real. But what exactly causes poor Internet quality? Let’s break down the three main culprits: latency, packet loss, and jitter.
How Network Quality is Measured
Delay in Communication
Latency measures the time it takes for data to travel from your device to its destination and back. It’s usually quantified in milliseconds (ms). High latency results in noticeable delays in online activities. (Recently, I published a blog specifically on the topic of latency. You can read it here!)
Latency can be expressed in different ways: Round-Trip Time (RTT), ping, etc. RTT is the time in milliseconds that it takes to send a message and receive the result from server. It is the specific metric for network latency measured at the application level. Ping is a test that measures the same but at the transport level. As a result, RTT will usually be slightly higher because it accounts for the processing of more complex protocols. (Why? Well, that may be a topic for a future blog!)
High latency can cause voices to sound metallic or robotic in calls or lead to awkward pauses during conversations. In real-time applications, such as online gaming, high latency can create lag, impacting gameplay. Users might experience delays in the display of game actions or movements, making the experience less enjoyable and more frustrating.
On live calls, latency of 150 ms or less is considered acceptable. Anything beyond 300 ms will result in a horrendous calling experience.
When Data Doesn’t Arrive
Packet Loss happens when data packets fail to reach their intended destination. This issue can arise due to network congestion, faulty hardware, or poor signal quality. It is expressed as a percentage of the total packets sent.
When packet loss occurs, you might experience a frozen screen during video calls or encounter unusually high session timeouts in online applications. Audio calls can become choppy, with voices cutting in and out or people talking over each other. This disrupts communication and impairs user experience by making interactions less clear and less reliable. In applications like video streaming, packet loss can lead to interruptions and a degraded viewing experience, with frequent buffering and lower quality visuals.
It's worth noting that ANY packet loss signals a problem. While certain types of traffics may accommodate 1-2%, 5% under any circumstances is considered high, and will affect the overall experience significantly.
Variability in Data Arrival Times
Jitter measures the variability in packet arrival times. While latency indicates delay, jitter highlights the inconsistency of that delay. High jitter can lead to uneven performance, especially in real-time applications. Since Jitter is the variability in Latency, it is also quantified in milliseconds (ms).
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With high jitter, you might notice that conversations speed up and slow down erratically or that video quality fluctuates between clear and blurry. This variability disrupts smooth communication and can lead to erratic performance in streaming or online gaming, making for a frustrating experience. For example, during a video conference, jitter can cause participants to appear out of sync or result in sudden audio distortions, hampering effective communication.
Jitter of 30 ms or more will result in distortion and disruption on a live call.
Measuring and Improving Quality of Experience
What’s crucial is focusing on the Quality of Experience (QoE) rather than just the raw quality of your Internet service. It’s important to address poor service from your ISP, but enhancing your network experience involves more than that.
QoE encompasses how well your network performs from the user’s perspective, taking into account factors like latency, packet loss, and jitter. This holistic view helps in understanding and improving the actual experience users have, rather than just the technical performance metrics. While you should definitely hold your ISP accountable for service issues, optimizing your network experience is a broader effort that involves ensuring that all these factors are working harmoniously to deliver a smooth and reliable connection.
SD-WAN with Adaptiv: Optimizing Network Performance
This is where SD-WAN from Adaptiv Networks plays a crucial role. By leveraging multiple ISP links, Adaptiv continuously monitors network performance and adjusts traffic to maximize the Quality of Experience. Adaptiv continuously measures for latency, packet loss and jitter, and then calculates a Mean Opinion Score (MOS), offering a comprehensive view of network health. This score, from 1 to 5, is an estimate of user experience where 5 is excellent and 1 is unacceptable. Anything below 3.5 would indicate poor experience at best.
Adaptiv's SD-WAN not only measures these factors but also dynamically manages traffic to ensure optimal performance across different network paths. This means that if one link starts to underperform, traffic can be redirected through more reliable links, maintaining a consistent and high-quality connection. This proactive approach helps mitigate issues before they impact users and ensures that network performance remains robust and reliable.
With Adaptiv, even if your primary Internet connection is fully interrupted, your QoE may very well remain completely unaffected.
Conclusion
Understanding and managing latency, packet loss, and jitter is key to improving your network quality. With Adaptiv's SD-WAN solutions, you can significantly enhance your connectivity and ensure a smoother, more reliable experience. By continuously monitoring and optimizing network performance, Adaptiv helps you navigate and resolve connectivity challenges, ensuring that even if your Internet service isn’t perfect, your overall network experience will be... Even if you don't have time to dance or make a sandwich.
About Adaptiv: We remove the barriers of business digital transformation with amazingly simple and effective cloud connectivity. Our mission is to deliver SD-WAN as a Services via our network of partners such that businesses of all sizes can realize the benefits of digital transformation with reliable, secure and efficient cloud connectivity.
To learn more about Adaptiv Networks, please visit adaptiv-networks.com, or contact presales@adaptiv-networks.com.
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About the Author: Sébastien Tellier is the VP of Solutions at Adaptiv Networks. Prior to joining Adaptiv, Sébastien worked at Martello and ELFIQ Networks, where he held different positions in marketing and sales in the SD-WAN market. During that time, he appeared on panels and shows in Europe and North America, while working with channel partners across the planet. Sébastien holds a Master of Science in Marketing from HEC Montréal.
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