Wirebook › Glossary › Packet loss
What is packet loss?
In one sentence: When some of the small pieces a message is cut into never arrive, causing gaps in calls and players snapping back in games.
A little more
Packet loss is when some of the small pieces a message is cut into never arrive. A weak Wi-Fi signal, a damaged cable or an overloaded router somewhere on the way can drop them.
For a web page or a download, the missing pieces are simply sent again, so things just get a little slower. For a game or a call there's no time to wait, so a lost piece means a frozen picture, a gap in someone's voice, or a player who suddenly snaps back to where they were a moment ago.
It's a bit like… Posting a story as numbered postcards and a few go missing: you can ask for them again, but if you're reading it out live, there's just a gap.
See it in action
- BonusWhy does every speed test give a different answer?A speed test is a water-balloon race: fill a balloon from the internet tap for ten seconds and divide the water by the time.9 min · interactive
- 6How does a message cross the world in a blink?Race an undersea cable against satellites between any two cities, see why glass threads on the sea floor carry almost all the world's data, and chop a message into packets that arrive in a jumble..7 min · interactive
- BonusWhy can a download pick up where it left off?Break a pretend file into numbered pieces, interrupt the download, and compare restart-from-zero with resume-using-byte-ranges.6 min · interactive
- 14How can lots of people play the same game together?Share a pretend park with friends in other houses: every move is a message to a shared world on a server.7 min · interactive
- BonusHow does a photo fly to the phone next to you?Send a pretend photo to the phone next to you and watch how AirDrop and Quick Share really work: a tiny Bluetooth shout to find each other, a private Wi-Fi lane with no router, and numbered pieces that fly over like paper aeroplanes and click back together like a jigsaw.8 min · interactive
- BonusHow does a game controller talk to a console?Your controller fires tiny paper darts at the console hundreds of times a second, each one a snapshot of every button and stick.8 min · interactive
Do it for real
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