h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A543142

Why you get dodgy effects watching live video feeds or playing games on the net, and two ways which have been proposed to help: IntServ and DiffServ.

Pretty thorough article, though I'd expect that from a scout

Okay, Firstly needs definitions of all those acronyms, not everyone knows what they mean . Footnotes could be used effectively to spell them out. Especially needed with those that form a major part of any one section (TSPEC, RSPEC, RSVP, and RESV for example).

Secondly, Spell out Quality of Service in the title not "QoS"

Also note that "Quality of Service" as a whole is not related solely to the internet but is more of a management concept, it can (and sometime does), for example, refer to things such as making sureyour burger is properly cooked at McDonalds or that Fed-ex deliver your package without breaking it. A better title would be "Providing Quality of service /on/ the internet" or something similar.

Are you sure that QoS of networking and QoS of management are the same thing? Seems to me like they're vaguelly related, but ultimately seperate concepts....

Hence even more need for clarification in the title. Titles are supposed to be as specific as possible to allow similar sounding but different meaning subjects to have their own entries. This is most obvious in the need to distinguish different places in the guide by state, county and Nation.

Lets take one of my articles as an example, Field Hockey . If I was to use the name simply Hockey (as it would be recognised by the olympic movement) there would be confusion from certain sectors of the community (notably scandinavians and canadians for example) and calls that other versions to be included in that entry. However, by specifying that it was Field Hockey there is greater understanding of what it represents in the first place and also allows inclusion of Ice Hockey or Skater Hockey in separate entries later.

Perhaps "Internet Quality of Service" would describe it best?

hmm. I'll think about it - I'm not sure either way at the moment...

I've fixed the acronym-like stuff and made some of the other changes you suggested - thanks

Looking better.

The second paragraph of the introduction is good except for - "It's not related to the management "quality" buzzwords either, which no doubt causes pointy haired bosses endless confusion.."

My point is that quality of service is looked for in any service industries if the managers have their heads screwed on right (or are being advised by very expensive management consultants ). They are equally trying to make sure that there is less than 0.1% of defects in their products or that 99.99% of customers are served within 10 minutes. The idea and reasoning behind it is very similar to the QoS you describe. This is why I think you need to be very specific about what you are talking about.

You might mention that the reason that this is needed is that tcp/ip version 4 had no provision for streaming media due to the recent development of push technology. I don't know if this has been fixed in version 6 or not.

well, IPv4 has eight "type of service" bits in the IP header, for future expansion, and these are used in DiffServ. But it was something they left to deal with later... IPv6 doesn't fix it, that I can see: I've looked through my notes on the topic, and can't see any mention. I suspect they've decided that DiffServ is the way forward for now, however bad it might be. Internal networks can, of course, use whatever hey like...

Good and thoroughly researched entry.

One thing, and that may be because I'm a hebrew speaker and know absoluely nothing about british spelling/grammer differences from america, but:
In "The Problem" section, on the ent of "order - " paragraph, the word "down" seems to be missing (it says upside, instead of upside down)

Cheers,

Dancer

dear lucinda (and all),

This entry was chosen for inclusion in the editeg guide.

i don't need to tell you about the wait for the sub-eds, nor that you'll be notified when the work is done and the entry is included, because you alredy know.

it is a lot of fun to write in lower case. you should try it sometimes (just not in guide entries that are met for peer review).

loved your entry, another great one.

yours,

dancer

Editorial Note: This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review forum because this entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

If they have not been along already, the Scout who recommended your entry will post here soon, to let you know what happens next. Meanwhile you can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!

Thanks Dancer - and sorry I've not replied for a while - been super-busy!

Thanks for the tip

Hi Lucinda,

Good entry - I've started subediting this

I have a question (more may come up...) What's telephony?

The entry as I edit it is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A593381 . Please don't be alarmed if things change colour before its passed over to the inhouse peeps, and do tell me if I seem to be doing something you majorly dislike

Joanna

Hi joanna, and thanks for the headsup!

From dictionary.com :
> "(1) The transmission of sound between distant stations, especially by radio or telephone. (2) The technology and manufacture of telephone equipment"
[squack: I'm quoting under fair use, and I'm attributing it with the official name of the company, as displayed on their logo]

It's the first meaning that is meant here - 'internet telephony' is often used to refer to the transmission of sound between two computers using the internet.

Hope that helps!

Thanks... I guess I should include that meaning in the entry because my straw poll (of one other internet user - who says I have to be scientific?! ) proved that he didn't know what it was either.


...next question: in the list, below the Types of Applications header, you talk about latency and jitter as if they have very specific meanings.
I get jitter, I think - is that when you get a little blip in transmission? If I'm right then I guess the entry doesn't need an explanation of it because if I can get it so can anyone else.
But latency I'm not sure about enough to hazard a guess.

Sorry to be so nitpicky.

no no - this is all good - ideally it'd have been picked up in peer review

Latency is the time between the information being sent and it being received. So latency is much higher by snail mail than email, for example. Jitter is pretty much what you said - there may be a technical definition, but I don't know it...

Let me know when you're done, and I'll check it over, see if everything looks accurate. Thanks

I guess that in peer review one doesn't read as closely. Its not of if any of the things I've pointed out so far are make or break as far as this entry's concerned...

Okay, I'm done editing this, apart from one last question: IP header = internet protocol header? And what's that anyway?

Yes, what you said. 'IP' is the protocol which is used on (most of) the internet. the header is a bit which goes at the top of each packet to say where it needs to go, where it came from, and yada yada yada.

sorry for the delay.

Thank you, & don't worry - I was just worried you wouldn't notice this thread because you have so many active ones

I'll be sending it back later today.