Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread Pistone, Mike


I wasn't really sure where to post this, but I figured NANOG would have some
insight or at least experience here.

I was curious if anybody would share what they consider to be average or
acceptable transatlantic ping response times over a T1.
I know there are tons of variables here, but I am looking for ballpark
figures.
Assume that utilization on the circuit is extremely low, and you are
measuring point to point across the line.  You can also assume no other
bottlenecks effecting the response times (router performance, or what not).
Should you see a ~150ms trip?  250ms?  450ms???

Also,  if possible, include the to and from info.  Obviously  NYC to London
is a bit different than Dallas to Prague or something.   

Is there any equation to estimate response times?  For example, if your
circuit from A to Z has a 500ms avg response, than that equates to a circuit
distance of aprox. 5000 miles or something?

Thanks in advance,


Mike






Re: Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread Neil J. McRae


Should be around 70ms RTT for London to NYC on an E1, so maybe a little
more or less for a T1.

Regards,
Neil.
--
Neil J. McRae - Alive and Kicking
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread Iljitsch van Beijnum


On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Pistone, Mike wrote:

 I was curious if anybody would share what they consider to be average or
 acceptable transatlantic ping response times over a T1.
 I know there are tons of variables here, but I am looking for ballpark
 figures.
 Assume that utilization on the circuit is extremely low, and you are
 measuring point to point across the line.  You can also assume no other
 bottlenecks effecting the response times (router performance, or what not).
 Should you see a ~150ms trip?  250ms?  450ms???

Something like 70 - 100 ms with small packets.

 Is there any equation to estimate response times?  For example, if your
 circuit from A to Z has a 500ms avg response, than that equates to a circuit
 distance of aprox. 5000 miles or something?

The three main components in the delay are:

- serialization delay: it takes a certain amount of time to get a packet
  out of the interface. This is the size of the packet divided by the
  bandwidth of link. For instance: 1500 bytes = 12000 bits / 1536000 bps
  ~= 8 ms. (Double for RTT.)

- speed of light: this depends on the medium. For fiber, it's about
  200,000 km/s = 125,000 mi/s. So 5000 miles worth of fiber (which could
  be the atlantic, but your milage may vary) is 40 ms. (Double for RTT.)

- queuing delays: this depends on how busy the circuit is and on the
  number of hops.

You can remove the queuing factor by leaving your ping running for a
fairly long time and then only look at the shortest RTT. If the shortest
and the average RTTs are far apart, the circuit is very busy.




Re: Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread Jake Khuon


### On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 09:13:20 -0600, Pistone, Mike
### [EMAIL PROTECTED] casually decided to expound upon
### '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] the following thoughts about
### Transatlantic response times.:

MP I was curious if anybody would share what they consider to be average or
MP acceptable transatlantic ping response times over a T1.
MP I know there are tons of variables here, but I am looking for ballpark
MP figures.
MP Assume that utilization on the circuit is extremely low, and you are
MP measuring point to point across the line.  You can also assume no other
MP bottlenecks effecting the response times (router performance, or what not).
MP Should you see a ~150ms trip?  250ms?  450ms???

Well, I've been seeing around 70ms (+/- 5ms) RTT pings from NYC to LON
across AC-1 (Global Crossing) as normal.  Granted this is on an OC-48 but
bandwidth should not matter much to RTT if the load is light and all you're
measuring is ICMP ping.


MP Is there any equation to estimate response times?  For example, if your
MP circuit from A to Z has a 500ms avg response, than that equates to a circuit
MP distance of aprox. 5000 miles or something?

Assuming you exclude switching latency in the hardware, latency induced by
regenerators, etc... spead of light in a medium is a simple
distance-rate-time equation with a slight twist: c = nL/t, where n is the
refractive index, L is the length, and t is the transmission time difference
(double this for RTT).  The rest is just simple math.  So expected one way
time should be: t = nL/c

Note -- I believe most fiber optic cables have a refractive index somewhere
on the order of 1.4.


--
/*===[ Jake Khuon [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]==+
 | Packet Plumber, Network Engineers /| / [~ [~ |) | | --- |
 | for Effective Bandwidth Utilisation  / |/  [_ [_ |) |_| N E T W O R K S |
 +=*/



Re: Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread PETER JANSEN


Mike:


Our web site at http://sla.cw.net/ provides you with real time RTT
measurements on our network. That should give you a good picture
of typical large network response times. 

Regards

Peter Jansen
Global Peering
Cable  Wireless




Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 10:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Pistone, Mike [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Transatlantic response times.


I wasn't really sure where to post this, but I figured NANOG would have some
insight or at least experience here.

I was curious if anybody would share what they consider to be average or
acceptable transatlantic ping response times over a T1.
I know there are tons of variables here, but I am looking for ballpark
figures.
Assume that utilization on the circuit is extremely low, and you are
measuring point to point across the line.  You can also assume no other
bottlenecks effecting the response times (router performance, or what not).
Should you see a ~150ms trip?  250ms?  450ms???

Also,  if possible, include the to and from info.  Obviously  NYC to London
is a bit different than Dallas to Prague or something.   

Is there any equation to estimate response times?  For example, if your
circuit from A to Z has a 500ms avg response, than that equates to a circuit
distance of aprox. 5000 miles or something?

Thanks in advance,


Mike






Re: Transatlantic response times.

2002-03-25 Thread Richard A Steenbergen


On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 09:13:20AM -0600, Pistone, Mike wrote:
 Is there any equation to estimate response times?  For example, if your
 circuit from A to Z has a 500ms avg response, than that equates to a circuit
 distance of aprox. 5000 miles or something?

As I'm sure you remember from your physics class, light travels through a
vacuum at 299,792 km/sec (lets call it 300,000). When it travels through
other mediums, it moves slower based on that medium's refractive index. 
For example, water has a refractive index of 1.33, which means light 
travels through water at about 0.75c, or about 225,000 km/sec.

Fiber works on a principal called total internal refraction, which means
that the light is continually reflected into the core with no (or little)  
loss in the cladding. To accomplish this, different material with
different refractive indexes is used. Since the cladding has a lower
refractive index than the core, as long as the angle of incidence exceeds
a critical angle, the light will be reflected back into the core instead
of shooting out the sides. The values of refractive indexes used in fiber
are usually something along the lines of 1.46 in the cladding and 1.48 in
the core.

So if you do a little math, you'll see that light propagates through fiber 
at around 0.67c, or 200,000 km/sec (or approx 125,000 miles/sec). Putting 
that in ms terms so even ping monkeys understand, you get approximately 
1ms of speed-of-light induced delay per 200 km (or 125 miles) of fiber 
path.

As an example (and to answer your original question), 500ms RTT / 2 is 
approximately a 50,000 km or 31,250 mile fiber path. Adjust a little for 
all the microseconds of switching and buffering which happens to your 
packet along the way, and you can get a fairly good idea how drunk the 
people were when they laid your fiber.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)