A Comparison of Field Performance Measurements on Multi-National Packet Switching Networks

By design, not all packet services offer the same performance. Many are designed for good delay or throughput, but not both. A few are designed to achieve both. This paper discusses delay and throughput performance measurement results from several years of packet switching field performance measurements conducted by AT&T Bell Laboratories. The performance measurements were made on and between several North American, European, Pacific and Asian networks. A wide range of performance was observed. Clearly, users should compare their applications performance requirements with that obtainable on a specific packet service before selecting and using that service.