Latency, bandwidth and throughput are not same

Hello friends,

Today we shall discuss similar looking terms in networking such as Latency, bandwidth and throughput. Sometimes they are used interchangeably however in reality, they are not same. Let’s go through them one by one and try to get clarity.

Latency– Delay or time it takes for a single data packet to travel from sender to receiver. High latency results in slow response times and can significantly reduce throughput.

Example-

1. Time it takes for one car to travel the length of the highway
2. Time it takes for a single droplet of water to travel the length of the pipe.

Bandwidth– Maximum capacity for data transfer over a network connection in a given time period. often measured in bits per second (bps). Higher bandwidth generally allows for higher throughput.

Example-

1. Size of a highway
2. A pipe’s diameter that determines how much water could flow through it.

Throughput– Actual amount of data that successfully travels across the network per unit of time. It’s a real-world measure of performance and can be affected by bandwidth, latency, network congestion etc.

Example-

1. Volume of traffic on that highway
2. The amount of water that actually flows through the pipe in one second.

Binding them togather:

Below image clearly explains the difference of these terms

Lets take an example where source is A and target is B and distance between A and B is 100 KM.

In that case, let’s take example of car and bus to understand latency and throughput.

Car -> 100 km/hour, 4 people and Bus -> 50 km/hour, 50 people

Latency (distance/speed):

Car: 1 hour (less, better)

Bus: 2 hours

Throughput (Latency/no of people):

Car: 1 hour/4 = 15 mins/person,

Bus: 2 hours/50 = 2.4 mins/ person (faster, better)

As you can see in the above example that while latency of car is less, bus has better throughput. It also clearly explains that why throughput (i.e. latency of overall system) is important for system performance than mearly latency (single request).

Hope you liked the blog. Look forward to your feedback or suggestions in the comments below.