AAISP Director, Adrian Kennard, said (blog):

"Packet loss is normal when a link is full and the way TCP adapts to a full link, but random packet loss fools TCP so one of the main effects of packet loss is low speed on file transfers using TCP. It is not the only impact, as random packet loss can cause drops in VoIP, delayed DNS lookups, missed syslogs, slow throughput, and so on.

Our favourite telco are insisting that we identify the end users perceived problem. They cannot understand that the we have a technical end user that perceives "random packet loss" as "the problem". It is not "when I got to facebook it is slow", it is "I can see there is random packet loss". They also fail to understand that *WE* are their customer and what we as the customer perceived as the fault is measurable random packet loss on the line...

As an ISP I would far rather a customer came to me saying "I see 2% packet loss" or "I see 2% packet loss to XXX". I can test and diagnose a report like that. What I don't want is someone saying "The internets are slow". It seems out favourite telco want the latter and when you provide actual detailed reports of exactly what is wrong they cannot cope."