Paper Review:
End-to-End Packet Delay and Loss Behavior in the Internet

Reviewer: Oleg Elkhunovich

Problem

This paper analyzes the end-to-end packet delay and loss behavior of the Internet. End-to-end packet delay is the sum of the delays experienced at each hop on the way to the destination. The objective is to understand the packet delay and loss behavior.

Contribution

Paper does a good job analyzing the packet delay and loss behavior of the Internet. It is important because it has implications in designing various network algorithms. It is also very important for audio and video applications over the Internet.

Main Ideas

  • Mix of bulk traffic is characterized by larger packet size
  • Interactive traffic is characterized by smaller packet size
  • Compression/clustering and rapid fluctuations of delays over small intervals
  • Losses of probe packets are essentially random. The exception is when large fraction of bandwidth is consumed

    Critique

    Significance:3
    The significance of this paper is pretty high as it helps to understand packet behavior in the Internet. The results are helpful in algorithm design for routing and error control. It is not breakthrough however, as it mostly confirms the results of other studies that used different methodologies.
    Methodology:
    Mehotdology of this paper is very convincing. Authors do a good job explaining their experiments and presenting their data.
    Limitation:
    This paper barely presents any new facts. In most cases it confirms the results of other studies that used different methods. It seems like the only new result coming out of this paper is that losses of packets is essentially random.

    Lessons:
    Characteristics of Internet packet traffic. Dependence of packet size on packet delay. Randomness of packet loss.