On today's networks, there are many different types of devices that communicate and exchange information. Applications and devices include Unified Communication (UC) systems, intermediary devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile devices, and the many other types of traffic that are added to the network on a daily basis. As a result, there are multiple reasons that packet loss and slow response times occur. Once it's determined that there is an issue, the troubleshooting process begins.

With troubleshooting connectivity issues, there are many approaches. All have the same goal: identify the trouble spots and narrow the scope to determine the root cause of the problem. Root causes can include misconfiguration and malware or hardware malfunction. In the following sections, we will analyze some of the root causes behind network delays and discuss three main concepts: latency, throughput, and packet loss.