Talk:Packet loss

Packet loss extends beyond ethernet
In the interest of broader networking, I think this page should address any packetized system, including links that do not adhere to a broad network standard, such as the flocks of 2.4 GHz ISM band wireless chips. This article is narrow enough that specific cases such as ethernet can be handled easily as subsections. HatlessAtless (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe join with Traffic shaping. --Milan Kerslager (talk) 04:40, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Contributions welcome, or pointers to sources...I'm not familiar with how the wireless protocols you're thinking of are different from IP in this regard. I didn't see anything specific to Ethernet.  Maybe this is a reference to packet collision? -- Beland (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Acceptable packet loss
The statement: "for Voice over IP traffic, the only effect seen due to the occasional dropped packet is jitter, and therefore... " is wrong. Jitter is "the undesired deviation from true periodicity of an assumed periodic" (wikipedia). Jitter causes packets to not arrive at the expected time, If they arrive at the wrong time by definition they are not lost! If anything, in VoIP, jitter can cause packet dropping by intermediate servers if they arrive too late / out of order. Marsam84 (talk) 05:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * If there is an automatic retransmission, packet loss causes jitter. There is automatic retransmission in TCP, WiFi and and other protocols. VoIP generally uses RTP so packet loss will generally cause dropouts, not jitter. But if there's a WiFi link involved, you'll get jitter. The article needs some cleanup in this and other areas. I have added a cleanup tag. -—Kvng 18:38, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I did a major rewrite of the article which should address these concerns. -- Beland (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

In wireless
has added scary information about packet loss in wireless networks. The fact is, WiFi networks do retransmissions at layer 2 to precisely to avoid these problems. I haven't read the refs yet so I am not reverting at this moment. ~Kvng (talk) 14:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)