On the Correlation Between Packet Size and Packet Loss on the Internet.
| Author: | Rust, S., Petto, J.,& Scheuermann, B. |
| Published in: | Proceedings of the NOMS 2025 IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium, 1-5 |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Type: | Academic articles |
| DOI: | 10.1109/NOMS57970.2025.11073730 |
The Internet is a dynamic network of networks utilizing various protocols across different layers to enable end-to-end communication between processes. Packet loss can occur for numerous reasons at any hop during a packet's journey. This paper explores the influence of packet size on the likelihood of packet loss. Discovering such a relationship provides valuable insights into optimal packet sizing, ultimately influencing the design of future protocols, applications, and networks. This study identifies correlations between packet size and packet loss through probe packets of varying sizes by leveraging public Internet services like ICMP and DNS for data collection. Our key contributions include a large-scale experiment gathering packet loss data from tens of thousands of targets, a dataset of packet loss probabilities across different packet sizes, and a detailed dataset analysis. The analysis shows that while packet size has a statistically significant influence on packet loss, its overall predictive strength is relatively low.
| Visit publication |

Connected HIIG researchers
Björn Scheuermann, Prof. Dr.
- Open Access
- Peer Reviewed
