1 Prelude for performance issues in packetized data transmissions Packetized data transmission is…
1 Prelude for performance issues in packetized data transmissions
Packetized data transmission is a foundational concept in the design of computer networks. An example is the sending of a 300-kbyte picture as 250 packets of 1200-bytes each over a cellular network. As another example, a live video feed may involve sending, say, 256-512-kbyte sized video frames at 25 fps (frames/sec) where the data network element segments each video frame into 400-500 packets of variable sizes (0.8-1.5 kbyte each). A performance engineering problem in the send/receive of data packets is about how to exploit the communication parallelism inherent in multi-hop data transfers say, transferring cellphone pictures from a sender in New York City to a receiver on the other side of the world (such as Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong, etc) where data packets have to transit through multiple routers along the path. The home-work problem is to analyze the performance improvements achievable by leveraging the communication parallelism in network transport with suitable choices of packet size and router parameters (such as link capacity, router speed, etc)”.
