So far, this chapter has been dealing with fundamental performance limits.

There are also practical limitations on the bit rate that can be offered to the
end-user, such as protocol overheads and latencies (delays). It is important to
keep the round-trip time short, that is, to minimize delays between network
elements, as this directly improves the performance of time-critical activities.
The round-trip time also affects the achievable application-level throughput in less obvious ways. Application
throughput depends on the behavior of the involved higher-layer protocols, and a reduced round-trip time
typically improves the application bit rate. This is because the most commonly used internet protocol, TCP, is
interactive, meaning that the sender buffers sent packets until it gets an acknowledgement from the receiver.
As the buffer size is limited, the sender may be forced to stop sending until acknowledgements have been
received and the corresponding buffered data can be removed. However, the shorter the round-trip time, the
less likely this is to happen.