Meaning
Signal propagation delay inherent in the home routed architecture for voice over long term evolution services. In this configuration, s8hr latency increases because the voice data packets must travel to the home network gateway and back to the visited network. High delay levels can degrade the user experience by causing noticeable pauses in conversation.
The term specifically refers to the delay in the user plane and does not include the time required for call setup signaling.
Packet Routing
Voice data is encapsulated and tunneled from the visited country back to the home core network. This s8hr latency is cumulative and includes the delay of the international transit links and the processing time at both gateways. The geographical distance between the subscriber and their home network is the primary factor in the total delay.
Audio Quality
Users begin to notice a lag in speech once the round trip delay exceeds a certain threshold. If the s8hr latency is too high, the conversation becomes difficult as participants accidentally talk over one another. Testing these values is a requirement for certifying a device for international roaming.
Protocol Overhead
Encapsulating the voice packets adds extra headers that increase the size of the data and the processing time at each node. This additional work contributes to the overall s8hr latency of the connection. Efficient gateway implementation is required to minimize this overhead and maintain a clear voice path.
