Performance of a Network

The performance of a network is measure of service quality of a

network as perceived by the user.
There are different ways to measure the performance of a
network, depending upon the nature and design of the network.
Finding the performance of a network depends on both quality of
the network and the quantity of the network.

Parameters for Measuring Network

Performance
 Bandwidth
 Latency (Delay)
 Bandwidth – Delay Product
 Throughput
 Jitter

BANDWIDTH

One of the most essential conditions of a website’s performance

is the amount of bandwidth allocated to the network.
Bandwidth determines how rapidly the webserver is able to
upload the requested information.
Bandwidth is characterized as the measure of data or information
that can be transmitted in a fixed measure of time.
The term can be used in two different contexts with two
distinctive estimating values.
In the case of digital devices, the bandwidth is measured in bits
per second(bps) or bytes per second.
In the case of analog devices, the bandwidth is measured in
cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz).
Bandwidth is only one component of what an individual sees as
the speed of a network.
People frequently mistake bandwidth with internet speed because
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tend to claim that they have a
fast “40Mbps connection” in their advertising campaigns. True
internet speed is actually the amount of data you receive every
second and that has a lot to do with latency too. “Bandwidth”
means “Capacity” and “Speed” means “Transfer rate”.
More bandwidth does not mean more speed.
Let us take a case where we have double the width of the tap
pipe, but the water rate is still the same as it was when the tap
pipe was half the width. Hence, there will be no improvement in
speed.
 Bandwidth in Hertz: It is the range of frequencies contained
in a composite signal or the range of frequencies a channel can
pass. For example, let us consider the bandwidth of a
subscriber telephone line as 4 kHz.
 Bandwidth in Bits per Seconds: It refers to the number of
bits per second that a channel, a link, or rather a network can
transmit. For example, we can say the bandwidth of a Fast
Ethernet network is a maximum of 100 Mbps, which means
that the network can send 100 Mbps of data.
Note: There exists an explicit relationship between the
bandwidth in hertz and the bandwidth in bits per second. An
increase in bandwidth in hertz means an increase in bandwidth in
bits per second. The relationship depends upon whether we have
baseband transmission or transmission with modulation.

LATENCY

In a network, during the process of data communication,

latency(also known as delay) is defined as the total time taken for
a complete message to arrive at the destination, starting with the
time when the first bit of the message is sent out from the source
and ending with the time when the last bit of the message is
delivered at the destination. The network connections where
small delays occur are called “Low-Latency-Networks” and the
network connections which suffer from long delays are known as
“High-Latency-Networks”.
High latency leads to the creation of bottlenecks in any network
communication. It stops the data from taking full advantage of
the network pipe and conclusively decreases the bandwidth of the
communicating network. The effect of the latency on a network’s
bandwidth can be temporary or never-ending depending on the
source of the delays. Latency is also known as a ping rate and is
measured in milliseconds(ms).
 In simpler terms latency may be defined as the time required
to successfully send a packet across a network.
 It is measured in many ways like a round trip, one-way, etc.
 It might be affected by any component in the chain utilized to
vehiculate data, like workstations, WAN links, routers, LAN, and
servers, and eventually may be limited for large networks, by
the speed of light.
Latency = Propagation Time + Transmission Time + Queuing
Time + Processing Delay
Propagation Time
It is the time required for a bit to travel from the source to the
destination. Propagation time can be calculated as the ratio
between the link length (distance) and the propagation speed
over the communicating medium. For example, for an electric
signal, propagation time is the time taken for the signal to travel
through a wire.
Propagation time = Distance / Propagation speed
Example:
Input: What will be the propagation time when the distance
between two points is 12, 000 km?
Assuming the propagation speed to be 2.4 * 10^8 m/s in
cable.

Output: We can calculate the propagation time as-

Propagation time = (12000 * 10000) / (2.4 * 10^8) = 50
ms
Transmission Time
Transmission Time is a time based on how long it takes to send
the signal down the transmission line. It consists of time costs for
an EM signal to propagate from one side to the other, or costs like
the training signals that are usually put on the front of a packet
by the sender, which helps the receiver synchronize clocks. The
transmission time of a message relies upon the size of the
message and the bandwidth of the channel.
Transmission time = Message size / Bandwidth
Example:
Input: What will be the propagation time and the transmission
time for a 2.5-kbyte
message when the bandwidth of the network is 1 Gbps?
Assuming the distance between
sender and receiver is 12, 000 km and speed of light is
2.4 * 10^8 m/s.

Output: We can calculate the propagation and transmission time

as-
 Propagation time = (12000 * 10000) / (2.4 * 10^8) = 50
ms
Transmission time = (2560 * 8) / 10^9 = 0.020 ms

Note: Since the message is short and the bandwidth is high,

the dominant factor is the
propagation time and not the transmission time(which can
be ignored).
Queuing Time
Queuing time is a time based on how long the packet has to sit
around in the router. Quite frequently the wire is busy, so we are
not able to transmit a packet immediately. The queuing time is
usually not a fixed factor, hence it changes with the load thrust in
the network. In cases like these, the packet sits waiting, ready to
go, in a queue. These delays are predominantly characterized by
the measure of traffic on the system. The more the traffic, the
more likely a packet is stuck in the queue, just sitting in the
memory, waiting.
Processing Delay
Processing delay is the delay based on how long it takes the
router to figure out where to send the packet. As soon as the
router finds it out, it will queue the packet for transmission. These
costs are predominantly based on the complexity of the protocol.
The router must decipher enough of the packet to make sense of
which queue to put the packet in. Typically the lower-level layers
of the stack have simpler protocols. If a router does not know
which physical port to send the packet to, it will send it to all the
ports, queuing the packet in many queues immediately.
Differently, at a higher level, like in IP protocols, the processing
may include making an ARP request to find out the physical
address of the destination before queuing the packet for
transmission. This situation may also be considered as a
processing delay.

BANDWIDTH – DELAY PRODUCT

Bandwidth and Delay are two performance measurements of a

link. However, what is significant in data communications is the
product of the two, the bandwidth-delay product. Let us take two
hypothetical cases as examples.
Case 1: Assume a link is of bandwidth 1bps and the delay of the
link is 5s. Let us find the bandwidth-delay product in this case.
From the image, we can say that this product 1 x 5 is the
maximum number of bits that can fill the link. There can be close
to 5 bits at any time on the link.

Bandwidth Delay Product

Case 2: Assume a link is of bandwidth 3bps. From the image, we

can say that there can be a maximum of 3 x 5 = 15 bits on the
line. The reason is that, at each second, there are 3 bits on the
line and the duration of each bit is 0.33s.
 Bandwidth Delay

For both examples, the product of bandwidth and delay is the

number of bits that can fill the link. This estimation is significant
in the event that we have to send data in bursts and wait for the
acknowledgment of each burst before sending the following one.
To utilize the maximum ability of the link, we have to make the
size of our burst twice the product of bandwidth and delay. Also,
we need to fill up the full-duplex channel. The sender ought to
send a burst of data of (2*bandwidth*delay) bits. The sender at
that point waits for the receiver’s acknowledgement for part of
the burst before sending another burst. The amount:
2*bandwidth*delay is the number of bits that can be in transition
at any time.

THROUGHPUT

Throughput is the number of messages successfully transmitted

per unit time. It is controlled by available bandwidth, the available
signal-to-noise ratio, and hardware limitations. The maximum
throughput of a network may be consequently higher than the
actual throughput achieved in everyday consumption. The terms
‘throughput’ and ‘bandwidth’ are often thought of as the same,
yet they are different. Bandwidth is the potential measurement of
a link, whereas throughput is an actual measurement of how fast
we can send data.
Throughput is measured by tabulating the amount of data
transferred between multiple locations during a specific period of
time, usually resulting in the unit of bits per second(bps), which
has evolved to bytes per second(Bps), kilobytes per
second(KBps), megabytes per second(MBps) and gigabytes per
second(Gbps). Throughput may be affected by numerous factors,
such as the hindrance of the underlying analog physical medium,
the available processing power of the system components, and
end-user behavior. When numerous protocol expenses are taken
into account, the use rate of the transferred data can be
significantly lower than the maximum achievable throughput.
Let us consider: A highway that has a capacity of moving, say,
200 vehicles at a time. But at a random time, someone notices
only, say, 150 vehicles moving through it due to some congestion
on the road. As a result, the capacity is likely to be 200 vehicles
per unit time and the throughput is 150 vehicles at a time.
Example:
Input: A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass only an
average of 12, 000 frames
per minute where each frame carries an average of 10,
000 bits. What will be the
throughput for this network?

Output: We can calculate the throughput as-

Throughput = (12, 000 x 10, 000) / 60 = 2 Mbps
The throughput is nearly equal to one-fifth of the
bandwidth in this case.

JITTER

Jitter is another performance issue related to the delay. In

technical terms, jitter is a “packet delay variance”. It can simply
mean that jitter is considered a problem when different packets of
data face different delays in a network and the data at the
receiver application is time-sensitive, i.e. audio or video data.
Jitter is measured in milliseconds(ms). It is defined as an
interference in the normal order of sending data packets. For
example: if the delay for the first packet is 10 ms, for the second
is 35 ms, and for the third is 50 ms, then the real-time destination
application that uses the packets experiences jitter.
Simply, a jitter is any deviation in or displacement of, the signal
pulses in a high-frequency digital signal. The deviation can be in
connection with the amplitude, the width of the signal pulse, or
the phase timing. The major causes of jitter are electromagnetic
interference(EMI) and crosstalk between signals. Jitter can lead to
the flickering of a display screen, affects the capability of a
processor in a desktop or server to proceed as expected,
introduce clicks or other undesired impacts in audio signals, and
loss of transmitted data between network devices.
Jitter is harmful and causes network congestion and packet loss.
 Congestion is like a traffic jam on the highway. Cars cannot
move forward at a reasonable speed in a traffic jam. Like a
traffic jam, in congestion, all the packets come to a junction at
the same time. Nothing can get loaded.
 The second negative effect is packet loss. When packets arrive
at unexpected intervals, the receiving system is not able to
process the information, which leads to missing information
also called “packet loss”. This has negative effects on video
viewing. If a video becomes pixelated and is skipping, the
network is experiencing a jitter. The result of the jitter is packet
loss. When you are playing a game online, the effect of packet
loss can be that a player begins moving around on the screen
randomly. Even worse, the game goes from one scene to the
next, skipping over part of the gameplay.

Jitter

In the above image, it can be noticed that the time it takes for
packets to be sent is not the same as the time in which they will
arrive at the receiver side. One of the packets faces an
unexpected delay on its way and is received after the expected
time. This is jitter.
A jitter buffer can reduce the effects of jitter, either in a network,
on a router or switch, or on a computer. The system at the
destination receiving the network packets usually receives them
from the buffer and not from the source system directly. Each
packet is fed out of the buffer at a regular rate. Another approach
to diminish jitter in case of multiple paths for traffic is to
selectively route traffic along the most stable paths or to always
pick the path that can come closest to the targeted packet
delivery rate.

Factors Affecting Network Performance

Below mentioned are the factors that affect the network
performance.
 Network Infrastrucutre
 Applications used in the Network
 Network Issues
 Network Security

Network Infrastructure

Network Infrastructure is one of the factors that affect network

performance. Network Infrastructure consists of routers, switches
services of a network like IP Addressing, wireless protocols, etc.,
and these factors directly affect the performance of the network.

Applications Used in the Network

Applications that are used in the Network can also have an impact
on the performance of the network as some applications that
have poor performance can take large bandwidth, for more
complicated applications, its maintenance is also important and
therefore it impacts the performance of the network.

Network Issues

Network Issue is a factor in Network Performance as the flaws or

loopholes in these issues can lead to many systemic issues.
Hardware issues can also impact the performance of the network.

Network Security

Network Security provides privacy, data integrity, etc.

Performance can be influenced by taking
network bandwidth which has the work of managing the scanning
of devices, encryption of data, etc. But these cases negatively
influence the network.