18 Jul 2022

Latency vs Throughput vs Bandwidth

Latency

→ Total time of delay between the time a user takes an action and the time they receive a response.

  • so called “round-trip
  • measured in milliseconds
  • impossible to have a zero-latency network
  • good latency < 150 ms

What Affects Latency?

Transmission Medium (eg. copper) can affect latency. Fibre optic cables are generally better than copper.

Routers and the speed at which they receive and forward data.

Bandwidth

→ the amount of data that can pass through a network at a given time

  • measured in kb/mb/gb per second

Throughput

→ The amount of data that can pass through, on average, over a specific period of time.

Throughput vs Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the potential speed of a connection.

Throughput is the actual speed.