SLAC-RAL Internet packet loss performance

The chart below shows the monthly median ping packet loss measured between SLAC (near San Francisco, California) and the Rutherford Appleton Lab (RAL) near Oxford in England, between Jan. 1995 and May 1999.

The arrows from the top indicate when the UK-US Research and Academic link was upgraded and by how much, starting from 2 Mbps in Jan-95 to 90 Mbps in May-98. The arrows from the botton indicate the major holidays (mainly the New Year periods). The black line is a least squares fot to an exponential with a slope of about 0.01% per month. The chart shows the rapid saturation (within a few months), as evidenced by bad packet loss (> 12%), following the major upgrades to the link. It also shows the effect of holidays (the vertical blue arrows indicate holiday periods) on the performance. The table at the top right corner indicates the packet loss percentages for the month of April 1999 between sites in different countries. It can be seen that packet loss is low (< 1%) within the UK and within the the U.S., however between the U.K. and U.S. packet loss is bad to unacceptable (> 10 %). This is caused by the congested trans-Atlantic link and the interconnects to the networks in each country. SLAC-RAL packet loss

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