TCP/IP Guide

Performance Measurements: Speed, Bandwidth, Throughput, and Latency

A number of terms are commonly used to refer to various aspects of network performance. Some of them are quite similar to each other, and you will often see them used—and in many cases, misused or even abused! I'll examine each of them to see how they are commonly used and what they really mean.

Note

More than just the issue of different terms related to performance, however, is the more important reality that there are multiple facets to performance. Depending on the application, the manner in which data is sent across the network may be more important than the raw speed at which it is transported. In particular, many multimedia applications require real-time performance; they ...