title: What is offered load in computer networks?
body: <p>What does 'offered load' mean in computer networks? I've seen this term being defined as 'the amount of data that all network nodes have to offer', but I'm not sure if I understood it well. Which kind of nodes are we talking about (hosts, switches and/or routers)?</p>
  
  <p>By that term, I also understand as a host sending network traffic throughout the network, because I always see 'offered load', on network experiments, being expressed in percent (such as latency(ms) vs offered load(%)). Can say that if the maximum achieved throughput is 1Gbps, we can assume that the maximum offered load is 1Gbps? Then, if we send a network traffic (ex. UDP generated by Iperf) at rate 100Mbps, can I say that we are offering load of 10%?</p>
  
  <p>Could anyone help me to understand what exactly network load is? With examples, possible.</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks in advance,    </p>