That adds variance, and packets aren't comparable because they may
suffer different kernel/hardware delays.

And there are no "different kernel/hardware delays" in the network?

If your RTT measurement method cannot handle some variance (using
standard sampling and data smoothing techniques similar to TCP) then it 
just needs to be fixed.

Besides measuring in the interrupt handler doesn't protect you
against local variances anyways because the interrupt timing has variability
(e.g due to irq off regions or due to interrupt mitigation or
higher priority interrupts) too

quoted

Yes, but why ignore local scheduling delays? 

Because one would want to ignore even network scheduling delays
if possible... unfortunately in some instances it's not.

The local delays add to the user experience too.
It's unclear why you want to ignore those.

-Andi

-- 
ak@linux.intel.com