Introduction
When it comes to networking, two primary metrics govern the connection quality: throughput and latency. Network throughput essentially refers to the amount of data that can flow through the pipes, while latency represents the time it takes for the data to make the round trip between two locations. It's a trade-off between these two metrics that cements the quality of network connections that a user experiences.
Understanding Network Throughput
To understand network throughput, think about bandwidth. Network throughput refers to the amount of information that can travel from one point to another within a specific period, usually measured in data per second. Think about it as the water that flows through a pipe. The wider the pipe, the more water can flow through it. That means the higher the throughput, the less time it takes to transfer larger amounts of data.
To put the importance of network throughput into perspective, let's consider a case where a user wants to stream a high-quality video. Streaming this video requires a large chunk of data to be sent across to the user device, and the ability to transport it quickly is what a higher network throughput would provide.
Understanding Network Latency
In contrast, network latency refers to the round-trip delay experienced by data packets during their travel time. It's measured in milliseconds, and it reflects the time delay in the communication between two end-points. In other words, it's a measure of how fast data travels through a network.
Latency can affect the network connection in several ways, including slow response times, delays in streaming or downloading data, and video buffering. A higher latency means that information will take more time to travel, resulting in a slower response from the server or data transfer.
Trading off Network Throughput and Latency
Although it would be ideal to have a high throughput network with low latency, there's always a trade-off between these two metrics. The more one metric is prioritized, the lower the quality of the other.
A low latency network, for instance, would mean that data travels quickly, but not necessarily quickly if the information to be transported is large. This translates to a low throughput network. An example might be a satellite internet connection that has low latency, but also a low throughput.
On the other hand, high throughput networks tend to be associated with high latency. This is because moving large amounts of data inevitably comes with some delay. An example is a cable modem that may have higher network throughput but also higher network latency.
Conclusion
In summary, while network throughput refers to the amount of data that can flow through a network in a specific time, network latency reflects the delay experienced by data packets during travelling time. Although both have their unique advantages, there's always a trade-off between them in that an ideal network might have high throughput and low latency. Thus, understanding the trade-off between network throughput and latency will help network administrators and businesses decide the ideal network connection they want.