Under section 5.4 Quality of Service on page 404:
Multimedia applications in particular, often need a minimum throughput and maximum latency to work.
Isn't this statement incorrect? Shouldn't it be :
Multimedia applications in particular, often need a maximum throughput and minimum latency to work.
1 Answer 1
I don't have a copy of this book to confirm the context, but I suspect that the sentence as written was intended to be interpreted as:
Multimedia applications in particular, often need the network to provide guarantees of a certain minimum throughput and maximum latency to work.
In other words, in order for a multimedia application to function, the channel must ensure at least a certain throughput and at most a certain latency—exactly what is written.
The key word to notice here is the indefinite article "a". Both of the following sentences are correct, with different meanings:
- Multimedia applications often need a minimum throughput and maximum latency to work.
- Multimedia applications benefit from maximum throughput and minimum latency.
To further confuse matters, the following sentence means the same thing as 2.
- Multimedia applications benefit from a maximum of throughput and a maximum of latency.
Isn't English grand?