Explain Packet loss and RTA

[blaha]

Hi, please explain to me what it means Packet loss and RTA?
How many packet means Packet loss=20% and RTA=200ms. It means that server sent 100 packet per one minute and 20% it was lost?
Thank's
Jan

[bwallace]

There is a good answer to your question on this thread https://support.nagios.com/forum/viewto ... 04&p=39935 but in case you cannot access it, I've pasted it here.

...packet loss is derived from the amount of ping's which get through and echo back. So in reality if one ping was dropped that would equal roughly 20% packet loss as you stated. As far as RTA "round trip average" goes, that is the amount of time it took "ON AVERAGE" for those 5 pings to reach their destination and echo a return. So, packet loss calculates the amount of connection loss, and RTA calculates the time it took you to send and receive a ping echo