Delays, Paths, and Order

In an IP network with many devices, every packet can take a different path from source to destination. That means that the arrival times of 2 consecutive packets are not deterministic. Another cause of unpredictability is congestion within a switch or anywhere along a path that delays a packet’s ultimate arrival. These delays cause packets to get to a destination device in a different order than they were sent. They also cause excessive latency or its inverse, burstiness. ST2110-21 provides a Virtual Reciever Model which we discuss in the paper you can get using the link below. In this post, we will provide a glimpse into using PIT Histograms to Diagnose Timing.

The root cause of many IP network issues is packet jitter. Excessive packet jitter leads to buffer over- and under-flows which, in turn, result in dropped packets and stalled data flows. In what follows, we will describe these issues and some of the ways that waveform monitors diagnose packet jitter problems.