Bandwidth, latency and throughput math

Skills you'll practise

• Convert between bits and bytes and calculate transfer times
• Calculate propagation delay, serialization delay and bandwidth-delay product
• Explain how TCP window size and latency cap a single flow
• Recognize bufferbloat and a link negotiated below its expected speed

Course outline

1. 1.Bandwidth, latency and throughput mathVideo · 2 min
2. 2.Bits, bytes and timeLesson · 20 min
3. 3.Windows, delay and queuesLesson · 20 min
4. 4.Jitter, percentiles and real-time trafficLesson · 20 min
5. 5.Bandwidth, latency and throughput math: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 19 questions
6. 6.Final exam8 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out

Sources it draws on

The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.

• RFC 7323: TCP Extensions for High Performance (window scaling)
• RFC 6349: Framework for TCP Throughput Testing
• RFC 8290: The Flow Queue CoDel Packet Scheduler and Active Queue Management Algorithm