In an embodiment, the packet flow timings may include the amount of time required for the receiving server to process the packet, which contaminates the resulting round-trip timing metric with the processing time. During periods of high server load (e.g. an online retail server on “cyber Monday”), the round trip packet timing may be distorted beyond the control limits.
In some configurations, endpoints may not be accurately identified due to the nature of the IP network address assignments and various networking approaches utilizing dynamic addressing and protocols such as Network Address Translation (NAT), which may increase the difficulty of obtaining accurate metrics.