A network engineer is monitoring a fiber uplink to a remote office and notes the uplink has been operating at 100% capacity for a long duration. Which of the following performance metrics is MOST likely to be impacted with sustained link saturation?
Correct Answer: A
When a fiber uplink is operating at 100% capacity for an extended period of time, it can cause sustained link saturation. This can impact the network's performance by increasing latency. Latency is the time it takes for a packet to travel from the source to its destination. When there is link saturation, packets may have to wait in a queue before being transmitted, which increases the time it takes for them to reach their destination. As a result, users may experience delays or timeouts when accessing network resources.
Other metrics such as jitter, speed, and bandwidth are also important, but they are not as directly impacted by sustained link saturation as latency.