Is the fastest confirmation time limited by the frequency of the Coordinator issued Milestones?

Question

Looking at traviota.iotalt.com, the fastest confirmation time encountered in the last 7 days was 29 seconds.

This looks likes the approximate same duration between Coordinator issued Milestones.

This leads me to wonder if the fastest confirmation time on the network will always be determined by the Milestone frequency.

Perhaps the average confirmation time on the network will also be related to the Milestone frequency.

How is the confirmation time related to the frequency of the Coordinator issued Milestones?

Answer 1

There is a link between milestone frequency and average confirmation time. But the time interval between milestone is not a lower bound for confirmation time.

If you submit a tx, and if you are lucky this tx can be immediately selected as tip to approve by a new milestone and you will have a very short confirmation time.

Establishing the exact relationship between milestone frequency and average confirmation time is probably too difficult because many factors comes into the equation like :

• tps
• rate of unfair transactions (i.e. transactions not using the random walk to select tips)
• alpha value
• network topology

Answer 2

I think while we have coordinator fastest confirmation time is limited by frequency how milestones are issued. By definition. Because to be confirmed = to be referenced by milestone. Average confirmation time must be strongly correlated with the milestone frequency too