Measurement of packet train arrival conditions in high latency networks

Real-time Internet applications such as telephony, video conferencing and remote control are increasing in importance. A critical requirement for such applications is the ability to receive data packets in correct order with minimal delay (latency) and loss of data. Most Internet Service Providers (ISP) try to achieve this by adding bandwidth in the form of additional infrastructure (links and routers) and load balancing to meet the continuous Internet traffic growth. For real-time protocols, such upgrades are not exclusively beneficial, however. They tend to increase the number of routers (and hence router queues) a packet has to pass through, and increase the potential for out-of-order delivery of packets. Our paper presents the baseline results of a longitudinal study investigating the effects of such infrastructure changes on international real-time traffic.