Latency vs bandwidth
The difference between latency and bandwidth and why it matters for performance: round-trip time and the speed of light, bandwidth and throughput, the bandwidth-delay product, why a faster connection does not make most web pages load faster, measuring both, and techniques that reduce latency such as CDNs, connection reuse, fewer round trips, batching and caching.
CodexBash, , 6 min read
"The internet is slow" can mean two very different things. A large download crawling along is a bandwidth problem: too little data per second. A web page that takes a second to start appearing, even on a fast connection, is a latency problem: each request takes too long to get there and back. Engineers mix them up constantly, and the fixes are completely different. Upgrading from a 100 Mbps to a 1 Gbps connection does almost nothing for most page loads, while moving a server closer to users can halve them. This article explains both, how they interact, and how to reduce the one that usually matters most.
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