Report offers WAN latency measurement insight

Thursday, November 10, 2011

A recent TechTarget report highlighted the importance of measuring wide area network latency, or the time it takes users to access a company's WAN.

The news provider indicated that no matter how big or small a company is, measuring WAN latency is crucial when monitoring network performance. Also, no matter how well prepared businesses think they are, issues are bound to occur.

North American WAN deployments are generally within the range of 35 to 70 milliseconds and, if latency increases by 1,500 milliseconds, customers will experience a delay of approximately one to two seconds, the report stated.

To measure WAN latency, organizations are encouraged to utilize a free ping network utility.

"Of course, to measure your WAN's latency, you'll want to ping across the links of your two WAN routers; thus, it makes the most sense to use those devices as the endpoints in your ping command," said the report.

A TechTarget report released earlier this year offered insight for organizations hoping to improve their WAN performance. Specifically, IT staff are encouraged to look for patterns from customers regarding reoccurring issues from their network access. Also, application delivery optimization systems should be evaluated with security, networking, data center and desktop aspects in mind.