Interpreting UI/Reports, PNM Viz Overview

RLa: Latency

Description

This visualization shows the round trip delay, or latency of your network service to our test points in Australia. As we roll this out internationally we will add other regions to these visualizations.

Like other measures, this is the delay from the agent on your computer through all of the network components to our test points and back again.

It does not just test the bit from your home to the telephone exchange because that is only one small part of the puzzle and you don’t ever just use that bit and you certainly don’t pay your service provider for just that bit!

There are links on this page to short articles on delay and latency as well as the typical components of a home internet service.

Real-world impacts

If you are struggling with poor response times from websites you visit but once they do respond the information appears quickly in your browser then network delay may be an issue.

This is a “slow response” issue – your network is working but just taking too long to respond to the initial requests you make.

Latency is actually rarely the root cause of a problem these days – it is sometimes a symptom and often it is just something to prove you have eliminated.

What to look for

In this visualization a higher number means a longer delay.

Usually these (round trip) delays would be less than 100ms (1/10 of a second) within a country and less than 500ms (half a second) to the other side of the world.

How do we test

We send a few small packets from your agent to a point in the network which immediately sends them back to your agent. This way we can measure the round trip delay.

What could cause longer Delays

Firstly, simple distance can cause a longer delay – it takes longer to get from London to Sydney than it does to get from London to Paris. Sometimes we can be surprised where our website is actually hosted.

Network configuration and capacity issues can also cause longer delays

Often, slow response is experienced by us but are not related to the delays in the network – this is the primary use of this visualization – it allows us to take network latency out of the mix and focus elsewhere.

With that in mind, remember that other things often cause slow responses. Examples include:

      • DNS lookup delays (see the DNS visualization for details)
      • Network loss causing delays due to retransmissions (see the loss visualization)
      • Poor web-server performance
      • Slow browser execution on your computer (too many tabs open doing too many things)

Next steps to diagnose or repair for Residential Trial Customers

First, and most importantly, decide if your issues are related to network latency.

Don’t troubleshoot network latency if these numbers look okay – use them to eliminate network latency and start looking elsewhere for the reasons for your poor responses.

Specifically, look at the DNS and Loss visualizations.

If you do see poor latencies then you could narrow down the source of them using tools such as ping and traceroute to diagnose and demarcate latency issues.

If the issue proves to be with your service provider then forward your TelcoSI email containing the PDF report to your service provider and ask them to take a look at why you are seeing these high latencies. They can use the information on this page to understand how we test and they can also contact us for in-depth guidance on what our reports mean ‘under the covers’.

Paying customers can also get a breakdown of delay by network component, network region and a breakdown of response time contributors including DNS, connect time, service response and network throughput.

More visualization Overviews:

TelcoSIAdmin

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