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34 CHAPTER 1 • COMPUTER NETWORKS AND THE INTERNET
We now finally arrive at Network Structure 5, which describes today’s Internet.
Network Structure 5, illustrated in Figure 1.15, builds on top of Network Structure 4
by adding content-provider networks. Google is currently one of the leading exam-
ples of such a content-provider network. As of this writing, it Google has 19 major data
centers distributed across North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia
with each data center having tens or hundreds of thousands of servers. Additionally,
Google has smaller data centers, each with a few hundred servers; these smaller data
centers are often located within IXPs. The Google data centers are all interconnected
via Google’s private TCP/IP network, which spans the entire globe but is neverthe-
less separate from the public Internet. Importantly, the Google private network only
carries traffic to/from Google servers. As shown in Figure 1.15, the Google private
network attempts to “bypass” the upper tiers of the Internet by peering (settlement
free) with lower-tier ISPs, either by directly connecting with them or by connecting
with them at IXPs [Labovitz 2010]. However, because many access ISPs can still only
be reached by transiting through tier-1 networks, the Google network also connects
to tier-1 ISPs, and pays those ISPs for the traffic it exchanges with them. By creating
its own network, a content provider not only reduces its payments to upper-tier ISPs,
but also has greater control of how its services are ultimately delivered to end users.
Google’s network infrastructure is described in greater detail in Section 2.6.
In summary, today’s Internet—a network of networks—is complex, consisting
of a dozen or so tier-1 ISPs and hundreds of thousands of lower-tier ISPs. The ISPs
are diverse in their coverage, with some spanning multiple continents and oceans,
and others limited to narrow geographic regions. The lower-tier ISPs connect to the
higher-tier ISPs, and the higher-tier ISPs interconnect with one another. Users and
content providers are customers of lower-tier ISPs, and lower-tier ISPs are customers
of higher-tier ISPs. In recent years, major content providers have also created their
own networks and connect directly into lower-tier ISPs where possible.
Tier 1 Tier 1 Content provider
ISP ISP (e.g., Google)
IXP IXP IXP
Regional Regional
ISP ISP
access access access access access access access access
ISP ISP ISP ISP ISP ISP ISP ISP
Figure 1.15 ♦ Interconnection of ISPs
1.4 • Delay, Loss, and Throughput in Packet-Switched Networks 35
1.4 Delay, Loss, and Throughput
in Packet-Switched Networks
Back in Section 1.1 we said that the Internet can be viewed as an infrastructure that
provides services to distributed applications running on end systems. Ideally, we
would like Internet services to be able to move as much data as we want between any
two end systems, instantaneously, without any loss of data. Alas, this is a lofty goal,
one that is unachievable in reality. Instead, computer networks necessarily constrain
throughput (the amount of data per second that can be transferred) between end sys-
tems, introduce delays between end systems, and can actually lose packets. On one
hand, it is unfortunate that the physical laws of reality introduce delay and loss as
well as constrain throughput. On the other hand, because computer networks have
these problems, there are many fascinating issues surrounding how to deal with the
problems—more than enough issues to fill a course on computer networking and to
motivate thousands of PhD theses! In this section, we’ll begin to examine and quan-
tify delay, loss, and throughput in computer networks.
1.4.1 Overview of Delay in Packet-Switched Networks
Recall that a packet starts in a host (the source), passes through a series of routers,
and ends its journey in another host (the destination). As a packet travels from one
node (host or router) to the subsequent node (host or router) along this path, the
packet suffers from several types of delays at each node along the path. The most
important of these delays are the nodal processing delay, queuing delay, transmis-
sion delay, and propagation delay; together, these delays accumulate to give a total
nodal delay. The performance of many Internet applications—such as search, Web
browsing, e-mail, maps, instant messaging, and voice-over-IP—are greatly affected
by network delays. In order to acquire a deep understanding of packet switching and
computer networks, we must understand the nature and importance of these delays.
Types of Delay
Let’s explore these delays in the context of Figure 1.16. As part of its end-to-end
route between source and destination, a packet is sent from the upstream node
through router A to router B. Our goal is to characterize the nodal delay at router A.
Note that router A has an outbound link leading to router B. This link is preceded
by a queue (also known as a buffer). When the packet arrives at router A from the
upstream node, router A examines the packet’s header to determine the appropriate
outbound link for the packet and then directs the packet to this link. In this exam-
ple, the outbound link for the packet is the one that leads to router B. A packet can
be transmitted on a link only if there is no other packet currently being transmitted
on the link and if there are no other packets preceding it in the queue; if the link is
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