System Latency

Latency contributes to performance degradation through two principle effects: the delay in transmission and acknowledgment creating conditions where applications must pause; and, a perception of loss created when a packet sent is not acknowledged within a given time frame. As seen in the image below, latency can have a profound impact on performance. In this example the network transport medium is a high quality SATCOM connection rated at 5Mb/s with no competing traffic and an open transponder. System latency is the only highly significant performance mitigation factor at play. The application is a test profile conducting transactions of a fixed size. Of a rated 5Mb/s capacity the application was able to achieve ~557kb/s with zero errors.