Technical Report on Gaming over the Internet. Some advice? (Newbie)
I think you would benefit from trying to determine the "audience" for your report. What kind of person would benefit from reading it? To me, you seem to be mixing at least two different discussions, "dealing with network latency in real time games" and "where does latency come from in the OSI model". Most audiences I can think of will only be interested in the details of one of these topics, and might be presumed to be familiar with the other. Audiences unfamiliar with either might not really benefit from reading something at this level at all, they may need to start with more basic material first. Once you have a clear audience in mind, it should be easier to determine what is relevant to the report and leave out extraneous detail.
Now, as the author *you* might need to research both simultaneously when you are writing your report - that is ok! But the final report doesn't have to reflect the exact mix of research you did.
I'm not saying you can't mix topics at all - just that you should focus on one above the others. Examples in particular are good, so if you were talking about "dealing with network latency in real time games", then you might want to refer to examples of where latency comes from in the real work (e.g. speed of light, network congestion, etc). However in the context of "dealing with network latency in real time games", I think it would be weird to start talking about the OSI model and worrying about which "layer" this happens at. In this context, there are two main "interesting" latency sources, those that are outside the control of the game developer (speed of light) and those that are affected by implementation choices (whether a server might immediately broadcast input updates or whether there is some "buffering" time).
As for approaching such a report, a "Top Down" approach of starting by defining "sections" and "topic headings" might suit some people, but I typically prefer to write things bottom up, diving in writing various paragraphs, and allowing the structure to evolve as the work progresses.
I don't know how much help this is, unfortunately I'm not familiar with the expectations of a report at a "H. Dip" level in whatever country you are in so it is difficult to offer concrete suggestions.
Actually finding out where latency comes from, and describing it in some detail, would be a fine report IMO.
Examine typical computers and games (where a game loop latency of 16 ms is common,) WiFi versus wired networking, Cable modems versis DSL versus cellphone modems, various back-haul networking tech, and then the difference between "hosted servers" in a data center, and "user run servers" that go all the way out through the same kind of connection to someone's bedroom.
If you actually draw a diagram of the major options at each hop, and list their properties and how they compose (loss & latency) that, in itself, could be a pretty solid report.
