Media access control is a low level protocol that dictates the format of low level communications. In ethernet the protocol is ethernet and it uses the cs/cdma format. For your home wifi it uses a hybrid of ethernet with additional format data to handle the radio medium. With fibre you have a plethora of formats and protocols to use, most stick with ethernet thought sonnet is still used and as we develop ways of signaling more data fibre strand we develop better formats and protocols to handle the medium.
Thus is why I sought clarification as the MAC layer is still several steps away from the power amplifier and each step adds a bit of latency. The major places of latency development are fairly easy to locate but almost always harder to reduce by any significant amount, especially when you consider the physical chipset used in this product.
I am actually glad to hear your networks policy is 0%. That is a goal that is fairly lofty and very hard to actually acheive. There is always some packet loss as a network grows and is utilized to the acceptable operating ratio. I am not trying to pick a fight with you, you have envinced that you know what you are doing.
Jitter buffers are a nice way to smooth problems over but try keeping one full on a network that routinely sees 100Mbps fd links hit 92%. Some loss happens and buffers allow for it, it is enevitable but we can control it to reduce losses to absolute minimums. I have yet to see an ISP network that had less that 0.1% known lost packets, mine included.
For my network, I dont worry about what I cant control. I control everything up to my edge and I have a contract for upstream service thats proven with a service level agreement that I track and enforce. I ensure a level of serviceability by ensuring I have enough bandwidth from multiple upstream providers and peer with networks that meet our peering policy, which is very selective. This ensures my clients will have no reason to go to the competition. We strive for 100% contentment of our clients, a happy client is a long term client. 100ms to get off my network I think is still reasonable though we are always looking for ways to reduce this to the bare minimum so that our clients not only have a highspeed connection but it has to feel fast too.
We cant even begin to compair our networks as they are very much different. From our choice of hardware and routing protocols to how we time our APs and select bandwidth ratios. The business policy that dictates network policy and etc. It is an apples to bananas comparison.