(1) In general, the period of time that one component in a system is spinning its wheels waiting for another component. Latency, therefore, is wasted time. For example, in accessing data on a disk, latency is defined as the time it takes to position the proper sector under the read/write head.
(2) In networking, the amount of time it takes a packet to travel from source to destination. Together, latency and bandwidth define the speed and capacity of a network.
(3) In VoIP terminology, latency refers to a delay in
packet
delivery. VoIP latency is a service issue that is usually based on physical
distance, hops, or voice to data conversion.
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It's the Latency, Stupid If you want to transfer a large file over your modem it might take several seconds, or even minutes. The less data you send, the less time it takes, but there's a limit. No matter how small the amount of data, for any particular network device there's always a minimum time that you can never beat. That's called the latency of the device.
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