On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 03:35:59PM +1300, Matthew Poole wrote:
Been running SmokePing for a little while now, building up a statistical sample, and wondering what's an acceptable level of loss to be seeing through the provider's core, both to targets foreign and domestic and also from the premises to the first hop in the provider's network.
Obviously I'm seeing a non-zero level (averages are in the zero-point-something range, but some of the maximums are above 0), so want to know what people consider to be the point where I go from "unreasonable customer" to "customer with a justified concern"?
There can be considerable impact with 0.05% average packet loss. If it's happening to all destinations then maybe there's a problem with the link? I would trust a known well connected host rather than your next hop, as lots of routers forward better than they answer pings. I'd also look at using iperf in udp mode, with a long test, at low bit rates, to see if it's bursty, what direction it's in, whether doing more or less traffic impacts it etc. Ben.