Common operational misconceptions

Thu Feb 16 21:40:45 UTC 2012

Right, asymmetric paths are the norm for many inter-provider
communications.
A related misconception is that asymmetric paths are problematic.
Another mis-conception related to path is that more (visible) hops are bad
with the corollary that routers introduce (significant) latency.
Of course, propagation delay is the most significant contributor to latency
in WAN environments (or serialization delay for low-speed links).

Tony

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 3:35 PM, Wayne E Bouchard <web at typo.org> wrote:

> Or more to the point, it is a misconception that traffic is
> symetrical (the path out and the path back are the same) whereas in
> the present network, symetrical paths are the exception rather than
> the rule, especially as your radius increases.
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 07:17:57PM -0500, Lee wrote:
> > traceroute shows _a_ path.  Your packets might have taken a different
> > path.  (& the return traffic yet another)
>
>