Packets Loss

[pdenableetoavit19698]

Hi there,

I am working on different networks and realise a few of them, complaining of connectivity issues, have quite a bit of packet loss even internally on their network. Most of this networks are classic router>switch>wlan>clients... and pinging from a client to the gateway or to a device across a vlan via intervlan, brings up quite a bit of packet loss (from 0,1% to 15%).

Is there a certain min amount of Packet Loss we can consider intrinsically ok, or especially on the LAN/WLAN, it needs to be 0% otherwise it means there is an issue on it?

How much could be acceptable and how much starts to be too much and needing to be sorted out?

What are normally the consequences/effects of it?

Is it normally a sign of certain specific issues on the network? Like more on router side, or clients creating issues, or cabling/interferences, or firewall etc?

What is the ideal place to start from troubleshooting it?

Any test, tools you may recommend to detect properly (ping, irpef?) and nailing it down?

Thank you for any advice!

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

"Classically", end-to-end, per flow, up to 1% loss is considered acceptable.  Personally, with so much current traffic directly interacting with users, for such traffic I like to see a loss percentage .1, or less.

Consequences/effects?  Poor to totally "broken" network apps.

Common cause?  Often congestion at an interface.

Where to start wired troubleshooting?  Check interface stats.

Where to start wireless troubleshooting?  Oh my, that's a specialty in itself, too much to list here. Suggest you search the Internet for more information.