Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet

TLDR: The existence of excessively large (bloated) buffers in systems, particularly network communication systems, has been identified as a major cause of network latency problems as discussed by the authors, which is referred to as bufferbloat.

Abstract: We have conflated "speed" with "band width." As Stuart Chesire wrote in "It's the Latency, Stupid" (http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html), "Making more bandwidth is easy. Once you have bad latency, you're stuck with it." Bufferbloat is the existence of excessively large (bloated) buffers in systems, particularly network communication systems. Bufferbloat is now (almost?) everywhere. Today's routers, switches, gateways, broad band gear, and so on have bloated buffer sizes to where we often measure latency in seconds, rather than microseconds or milliseconds.