[BBLISA] slow wan link

[Daniel Feenberg]

We have maxed out our WAN link, and users are complaining of slow access 
to websites and x-windows interaction. Yet when I ping sites on the 
internet I see no lost packets, and ping times for relatively close hosts 
are consistently 20 - 30 milliseconds. Large packets are about the same. 
Ping times to our ISP's router at their POP are 2-4 milliseconds. I see no 
dropped pings to real hosts. Sometimes the ISP router drops a ping but I 
understand that may be due to ICMP limiting.

I have difficulty reconciling these facts. If pings are fast and packets 
are not dropped, why do users see problems? I can confirm things seem 
slow. Is this the dreaded "buffer bloat" problem so recently hyped? Is 
there anything I can do here to aleviate it while waiting for more 
bandwidth?

Thanks
Daniel Feenberg
NBER