Can you please explain at question 9, how reducing the propagation delay does not increase the average throughput ?
I would argue, that b) is somewhat correct as well. I think we can agree that a) has much more influence on the average throughput, but a) definitely has influence on the average throughput (since we need to consider the propagation delay of ever link for the last bit/package). The question, in my eyes, was stated with the assumption that the propagation delays are non-influential in contrast to the transmission delays.
Another nice discussion.
Indeed, reducing the propagation delay would improve the average throughput but the improvement would most likely be insignificant.
In general, when there is a question about the average throughput from A to B, unless more details are given, the assumption is that A is sending a lot of data to B, and the transmission delay to push all this data onto the bottleneck link from A to B is significantly larger than the propagation delay of the path from A to B.
That said, it would have been clearer to phrase the question as: "What is the best way to improve the average through from A to B?"
Indeed, reducing the propagation delay would improve the average throughput but the improvement would most likely be insignificant.
In general, when there is a question about the average throughput from A to B, unless more details are given, the assumption is that A is sending a lot of data to B, and the transmission delay to push all this data onto the bottleneck link from A to B is significantly larger than the propagation delay of the path from A to B.
That said, it would have been clearer to phrase the question as: "What is the best way to improve the average through from A to B?"
