Network terms

 

1. Latency (The "Delay")

• What it is: The time it takes for a single piece of data (a packet) to travel from the sender to the receiver.

• The Analogy: This is the speed limit or the time it takes for a single car to drive from City A to City B.

• From the image: the end-to-end delay is shown as 40 ms. It measures the time for one single packet to reach its destination.

2. Throughput (The "Actual Data Delivered")

• What it is: The actual amount of data that successfully reaches the destination per second.

• The Analogy: This is the actual number of cars passing a specific point on the highway every minute. Traffic, accidents, or construction can slow this down.

• From the image: Even if the road is wide, the delivered rate here is 62 Mbps of actual data moving through.

3. Bandwidth (The "Link Capacity")

• What it is: The maximum potential rate that the network link can possibly carry. It’s the upper limit of your connection.

• The Analogy: This is the number of lanes on the highway. A 6-lane highway can hold more cars at once than a 2-lane highway, but it doesn't guarantee the cars will move faster if there's traffic.

• From the image: The total link capacity is 100 Mbps.

In simple context, Bandwidth as the size of the pipe, Throughput as how much water is actually flowing through it right now, and Latency as how fast the first drop of water hits your glass.