Figure 4-23. This graph shows SQL*Net packet latency results taken once each hour over a three-month period. While there are no alarming trends, the average latency for the 1,210 samples is 47.90 ms.

While many network administrators are not aware of Oracle application latency issues, most administrators will realize if there is a collision issue. Collisions are the result of some type of confusion between the packet sender and receiver. As a result, they both send a packet at the same time and collide. You won't get anything as exciting as subatomic particle collision results, just angry users.

A local area network can have up to 10% of its network activity collide and still be considered acceptable, but on modern-day switched networks, collisions should be near zero. It's very simple to determine the collision rate. You need two pieces of information: the number of collisions and the number of network card output packets. If you have root access, run the ifconfig command. Figure 4-24 is a sample ifconfig output. For Ethernet card eth0, since the system was rebooted, there have been 31 collisions and millions of packets both sent and received. The percentage of collisions in relation to both incoming and outgoing traffic is far below 1%. No problem there!