Summary: A series of 25 pings was sent from Riker to Picard to test the latency of the network connection. Data was taken for 10bT, 100bT, and 1000bT links. Link lengths were 14m for the 10bT and 100bT, and 12m for the 1000bT.

Calculations File: Ping Info.xls is the excel file where data analysis was performed.

Important Observations & Findings:
•The average pings speeds are as follows:
            Link Speed (Mbps)         Avg Ping (ms)         Error (ms)
            10                                 0.7512                   0.09877795
            100                               0.36968                  0.070367322
            1000                             0.41092                  0.077482213

•Since the RTTs are so low they have essentially no effect on the effective throughput of the link. Only the 1000bT link shows any speed degradation due to the RTT. If transferring a 1MB file the maximum effective throughput is 708Mbps. However, if we are transferring even a 10MB file the RTT has little effect, with the throughput being 960Mbps.

•It is interesting to note that the ping over 1000bT is actually higher than that over 100bT. This is especially curious given that the 1000bT link was actually shorter than the 100bT link. The only possible explanation is that it is somehow related to the fact that it was a crossover connection instead of a hardware switch. Unfortunately, due to the cost of 1000bT switches, one was not available for testing.