what is network latency

1 year ago 63
Nature

Answer:

Network latency is the delay in network communication, which shows the time that data takes to transfer across the network. It is a design and performance characteristic of a telecommunications network, and it is typically measured in multiples or fractions of a second. Latency is an important factor in building a good user experience, and businesses prefer low latency and faster network communication for greater productivity and more efficient business operations.

Network latency can be divided into several parts, including processing delay, queuing delay, transmission delay, and propagation delay. Processing delay is the time it takes a router to process the packet header, queuing delay is the time the packet spends in routing queues, transmission delay is the time it takes to push the packets bits onto the link, and propagation delay is the time for a signal to propagate through the media.

Latency is measured in milliseconds, or during speed tests, it’s referred to as a ping rate. The lower the ping rate, the better the performance. A ping rate of less than 100ms is considered acceptable, but for optimal performance, latency in the range of 30-40ms is desirable.

High network latencies can cause application performance to degrade, and at high enough levels, to fail. Latency issues can be caused by several factors, including network congestion, limited processing capacity of network devices, and slow server response times.

To measure network latency, one can determine the round-trip time (RTT) for a packet of data to travel to a destination and back again.

In summary, network latency is the delay in network communication, which shows the time that data takes to transfer across the network. It is measured in milliseconds or ping rate, and it can be divided into several parts. High network latencies can cause application performance to degrade, and latency issues can be caused by several factors.