Network Impairment and Replication Backlog in Hybrid-Cloud Migration: A Factorial Performance Study
Abstract
Hybrid-cloud replication performance is shaped by network latency, packet loss, bandwidth limits, and workload burstiness, yet these factors are often examined in isolation. A full-factorial experiment evaluated their combined effects across 384 replication runs using controlled write workloads and emulated network impairment. Replication backlog, convergence time, throughput efficiency, and recovery-point compliance were measured for each condition. Bandwidth limitation produced the largest main effect, but interactions with packet loss and bursty writes were substantial. At 1% packet loss, effective throughput fell by 12–19% depending on latency, while a combination of high latency and bursty change rate more than doubled backlog duration. Recovery-point objectives were breached in 44% of runs when sustained changed-data rate exceeded 80% of effective transfer capacity. Adaptive throttling of non-critical background traffic reduced breach frequency by 31% in the most constrained conditions. The findings emphasise that migration readiness cannot be assessed from nominal bandwidth alone. Effective bandwidth under realistic impairment and the ratio between incoming change rate and replication capacity provide more informative indicators of backlog risk.
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