11% packet loss?

Douglas C. Semonche (semonche@nic.com)
Mon, 16 Sep 1996 21:53:01 -0400 (EDT)

I've got one pm on an ether with a Cisco (gateway)
and two solaris x86 severs.

If I ping -s the cisco, portmaster, or other server
I get 0% packet loss. Yet if if ping -s one of the
IP numbers of a user connected by modem I might see
from 0% to 20% packet loss. Example:

----dialup-35.nic.com PING Statistics----
16 packets transmitted, 16 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 150/171/246

# ping -s dialup-20.nic.com
PING dialup-20.nic.com: 56 data bytes
----dialup-20.nic.com PING Statistics----
14 packets transmitted, 13 packets received, 7% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 121/234/893

# ping -s dialup-25.nic.com
PING dialup-25.nic.com: 56 data bytes
----dialup-25.nic.com PING Statistics----
18 packets transmitted, 16 packets received, 11% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 212/300/732

Is this an indication of a modem user with something misconfigured?
that my network is misconfigured? Is it a function of how hard the
user is pushing their modem link (I would assume if they were
loading a graphic web page just at the time I ping their
IP address I might see more packet loss but it is just a guess).

This is totally on my network, the ping is from Solaris box to
cisco to portmaster to dynamic assigned ip of the dial-in user.
Is such packet loss normal? an indication something is wrong?