Latency and throughput are two of the most popular and critical aspects in network performance. At the most basic level, latency is the time to send a packet of information from source to destination, while throughput is the rate at which the data is transferred.
However, discussing throughput vs latency in detail is important because both of these concepts affect your internet performance, whether you are streaming videos, conducting a business meeting on Zoom, or using any other cloud application online.
Considering this widespread impact, this article is meant to break down the differences between latency and throughput from different angles, such as speed, system design, and applications.
Quick Overview of Throughput and Latency
Before discussing what throughput vs latency is in detail, let’s get familiar with each of these terms one by one.
What is Throughput?
Throughput is the amount of data transferred from one point to another within a specific time frame. It is a representation of the system’s processing capacity and can be measured in different metrics, such as requests per second (RPS) or data per second (Mbps/Gbps). High throughput is desired in common processes like streaming, file transfers, and remote work to ensure high quality.
What is Latency?
Latency is the total amount of time it takes for a single request to travel from the client to the server and give a response. In simpler terms, latency refers to the delay experienced by a user.
Latency has a direct impact on an app’s responsiveness. For example, if a user clicks on a button, such as entering a Google search, and receives a response after 150 milliseconds (ms), it means the latency is 150 ms.
It is common to confuse latency with bandwidth, but they measure very different things. Bandwidth means the amount of data a connection can carry at once, while latency is the time it takes for the data to travel from source to destination.
Related: What is Latency vs Bandwidth?
Importance of Latency and Throughput
Being familiar with both latency and throughput is important because they determine how quickly a network can transfer data packets and, hence, affect the overall network speed. Latency determines the delay a user can experience while sending or receiving data from the network, while throughput affects the number of users who can access the network simultaneously.
Understanding the basics discussed above also helps you better understand these pairs:
- Low latency and high throughput is an ideal condition for a network to be responsive and efficient. It will provide optimum performance to the users and ensure maximum customer satisfaction for businesses because they’ll be able to provide quicker responses to a high volume of users simultaneously.
- High latency and low throughput means the network is struggling to send and process a large volume of data, resulting in poor performance.
Overall, the variations in latency and throughput can affect a network’s revenue generation capabilities. It also has an impact in everyday scenarios like live streaming, cloud computing, performance of SaaS applications, real-time communication, and data analytics.
Why Understanding Latency vs Throughput Is Important
If your goal is to create a healthy and reliable network for your business or application, you should pay special attention to the differences between latency vs throughput. Here’s why:
- Latency vs throughput system design affects how quickly users get responses and how many requests your system can handle at scale. Lack of balance here can cause delays and affect customer satisfaction.
- Throughput vs latency in caching is vital to optimize performance because caching minimizes the response times and increases the number of requests a system can handle without getting overloaded.
- Latency vs throughput in architecture also affects the system’s stability and responsiveness, especially because the network architecture can improve throughput but increase latency through additional services and layers in workflow.
Key Differences Between Latency vs Throughput
We’ve established the fact that both latency and throughput have an important role to play in a fast, stable, reliable, and efficient network. But they have some significant differences that you can now understand after becoming familiar with the basics.
Core Value
The most important difference between throughput and network latency is what they calculate and represent.
Latency is a measure of time, which represents the delay a user experiences until the data transfer is complete. Throughput, in comparison, is a measure of quantity to represent how much data can be transferred over a particular time frame.
Method of Measurement
There are also differences in latency vs throughput in terms of how they are measured. Network latency is measured by transmitting a small data packet and confirming when it arrives to calculate the ping time. The round-trip time (RTT) is displayed in milliseconds to get an idea of how long it is taking for the network to transfer data.
Calculation of throughput, especially manually, is a little bit more complex. It involves sending a file and dividing the total size by the time it takes to arrive. Generally, network testing tools are used to get a more accurate throughput value.
Unit of Measurement
The difference in the definitions of latency vs throughput is also clear in their units of measurement. Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) to show the complete delay. Throughput has multiple units of measurement, including bits per second (bps), kilobytes per second (Kbps), megabytes per second (Mbps), and gigabytes per second (Gbps) to show the overall data transfer capacity.
The following table sums up all the differences between throughput vs latency:
| Aspect | Latency | Throughput |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The delay before data starts to transfer after a request | The volume of data transferred over a specific period |
| Unit of Measurement | Milliseconds (ms) | Bps, Mbps, and Gbps |
| Primary Focus | Response time | Data-handling capacity |
| Key Factors | Routing paths, network distance, traffic load | Network congestions, available bandwidth |
| Performance Impact | High latency results in lags | Low throughput means slow data transfer |
| Impact on Users | Affects an app’s responsiveness | Affects how fast the content is delivered |
| Common Examples | Delays in API response time or website loadings | File downloads, uploads, and streaming speed |
Relationship Between Latency and Throughput
Despite several differences, it is important to note that throughput and latency are not fully independent metrics. They can directly affect each other in many ways. For example, high latency can limit the maximum threshold of throughput because the data is taking longer to travel between systems. Delayed responses mean the sender cannot transmit new data, which reduces the overall transfer rate.
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On the other hand, low throughput, which is often caused by heavy network traffic, can increase network latency. This happens because when a network is overloaded, data packets will line up and wait their turn, causing each request to take more time to complete successfully.
This relationship between latency and throughput shows that striking a balance between them is important to achieve optimal network performance.
Relationship Between Latency vs Throughput vs Bandwidth
Throughput, latency, and bandwidth are closely related when it comes to making up a stable network, but they measure different aspects:
- Bandwidth represents the maximum amount of data a network can carry.
- Throughput means how much data is actually delivered in real-world conditions.
- Latency is the measurement of time to determine how long it takes for data to travel from source to destination.
Understanding throughput vs bandwidth vs latency becomes handy to diagnose network performance issues. High bandwidth does not always translate into good performance if latency is high. Similarly, low throughput typically represents network congestion, packet loss, or strict protocol limitations.
This is why even with high bandwidth, a system can provide poor performance due to poor latency, network inefficiencies, and low throughput.
The network optimization process typically includes tweaking all three of these factors together to get fast response times, efficient data transfer, and overall reliable system performance.
Conclusion
Whether you are exploring latency vs throughput to design an application or improve an existing network, the key thing to remember is that latency measures time, while throughput measures capacity.
Key takeaways:
- Latency measures the amount of time it takes for data to move from source to destination. It is measured in ms.
- Throughput measures capacity by calculating the amount of data that can be sent per second or per minute. It is usually measured in Mbps or Gbps.
- Both latency and throughput are vital for system designs and network performance. Latency directly affects front-end apps like search engines, while throughput affects the backend, such as batch processing.
- Throughput and latency are also closely related to bandwidth. An optimum balance is required to get reliable performance as a system with high bandwidth, but low throughput and high latency will be inefficient.
A well-designed system is the one that has low latency and high throughput to handle users’ requests at scale quickly. Hence, striking the right balance between throughput and latency is important to ensure excellent system performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is latency the inverse of throughput?
No. Network latency is not the inverse or opposite of throughput. Latency measures delay, while throughput represents data transfer rate. Low latency can result in high throughput, but they are not always the inverse of each other.
How to measure throughput and latency?
Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) using ping or round-trip tests. Throughput is usually measured in Mbps or Gbps using network monitoring tools.
How to improve latency and throughput?
Some of the common steps to improve latency and throughput are optimizing network paths, reducing congestion, caching, increasing bandwidth, and minimizing processing delays.
Which is more important from throughput vs latency?
Low latency is vital for real-time apps like payment systems, while high throughput is important for large data transfers. So, it is dependent on the exact use case.
What is an ideal latency and throughput?
Ideal latency is as low as possible, which is usually 50-100 ms. Ideal throughput depends on the bandwidth requirements, such as 100 Mbps.
Does higher throughput mean faster internet?
Not always. Higher throughput supports more data transfer, but if it is coupled with high latency and congestion, your internet is likely to be slow as well.
