NOvermittelte

NOvermittelte is a term used in information theory and network studies to describe transmissions that are prepared for delivery but ultimately are not received by the intended endpoint. The concept models the portion of traffic that exits an initial sender stage but fails to complete end-to-end delivery because of interruptions, censorship, congestion, or processing errors within intermediate nodes. The word is a portmanteau combining a negation prefix with terms meaning transmission in several Germanic-root languages; its exact etymology is debated in academic discussions, and the term is mostly used in theoretical and simulation contexts rather than as a standard measurement.

In practice, NOvermittelte can take several forms: transient drops due to momentary congestion, persistent drops caused by deliberate filtering, and degraded transmissions where the payload is damaged or reduced.

Modeling and metrics: Researchers quantify NOvermittelte with rate (the fraction of generated messages that become NOvermittelte), distribution of time-to-delivery failure, and recovery behavior. It is often represented in queueing models or Markov processes.

Applications and significance: The concept helps study network reliability, resilience against censorship, and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies such as redundancy, forward error correction, acknowledgment schemes, and adaptive routing.

See also: Packet loss, network reliability, queueing theory, censorship studies.