Understanding Network Bandwidth vs Latency

What Is Bandwidth?

The amount of data that can be transferred over a period of time is known as bandwidth (usually one second). Let’s take an example: If your internet connection were a water pipe, bandwidth would be the amount of water that could pass through it in a second. More water can be transferred over a given time period with larger pipes. The standard unit of measurement for internet bandwidth is megabytes per second, or Mbps. High bandwidth generally translates to faster internet because all the data can be transferred in a shorter amount of time.

What Does Latency Mean?

The amount of time between sending a request for data (such as opening a web page) and receiving that data back is known as latency or ping (that page starts to load on your browser). Once more, visualize your internet connection as a water pipe, and your computer or phone as a hose that is attached to the pipe. The duration between turning on the water and first noticing water coming out of that hose is known as latency. With latency, as opposed to bandwidth, you want the lowest number. Milliseconds are typically used to measure latency.

Bandwidth Vs. Latency: Which Is More Important?

As you can see, both bandwidth and latency affect internet speeds. But which factor is more crucial? Although latency has a significant impact on how responsive your connection is and how fast it feels, bandwidth generally has a larger impact on how fast internet is, which is why internet service providers advertise bandwidth. Actually, bandwidth and latency are more of a team than a rival. High bandwidth and low latency are ideal, but depending on what you’re doing online, one may be slightly more crucial than the other.

Streaming Video and Music

The biggest factor affecting your experience when using streaming services like Netflix and Hulu to watch shows or movies or listen to music is bandwidth. If you have a lot of latency, there may be a slight delay before your video or song begins playing, but once the stream starts, everything should go fairly smoothly. However, if your bandwidth is limited, you might encounter choppy video and audio or annoying buffering.

On the other hand, latency has a little more significance if you are streaming content, like on Twitch or YouTube Live. Delays between what you do and what your viewers see will result from high latency. If you are observing the responses of your viewers, who will be responding to something you did quite some time ago, this could become quite perplexing.

Gaming

While bandwidth can help in providing a good online gaming experience, gamers are especially impacted by latency. Reaction time is a gigantic part of 99.99% of video games—you want actions to happen as instantly as possible—and a long latency will absolutely ruin the experience. Latency could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Video Conferencing

Zoom-like apps for video conferencing are increasingly popular as remote work becomes more widespread. Both bandwidth and latency are crucial because you are streaming both the video you are watching and the video you are sending out. To guarantee good video quality and reduce delays, you need high bandwidth and low latency.

Bandwidth vs. Latency: Internet Connections

You’re probably already aware that there are various types of internet connections and that each type’s overall quality level varies. One of the main reasons why one type of internet connection may be better or worse than another is due to variations in bandwidth and latency.

Fiber

The best home internet connection is thought to be fiber. This is mainly because it provides unrivaled bandwidth. In keeping with the analogy of the pipes, fiber internet offers the largest pipes. It’s not always true that fiber offers the lowest latency, though.

Although fiber does typically provide the lowest latency, cable can occasionally outperform it. Unfortunately, ISPs don’t promote or share their latency specifications. In order to determine which local connection offers the lowest latency when choosing between fiber and cable in your area, try to do some online research and find reviews.

Cable

Cable is the next connection in line after fiber in the internet connection hierarchy. High bandwidth can be provided by cable internet, but not quite to the same extent as fiber. In terms of latency, signals can theoretically move more quickly along cable’s cooper wires, but over lengthy distances, a significant amount of that momentum is lost, so fiber typically offers a marginally better latency.

DSL

Although DSL connections can offer sufficient latency and bandwidth, they fall far short of cable and fiber. DSL is also highly reliant on the ISP’s location. The bandwidth is smaller and the latency is longer the further away you are. DSL would probably not be your first choice if overall a good internet speed is important to you. DSL might be your next best choice if you don’t have access to cable or fiber, though.

Satellite Internet

Satellite internet can be regarded as fast in terms of bandwidth, occasionally surpassing the peak speeds of DSL. However, satellite has incredibly low latency. Consider the distance the signal must travel to reach outer space from your home. For gamers and live streamers, satellite latency is so bad that it is essentially not an option. Although technological solutions are being developed to address the latency problems with satellites, satellite internet will remain at the bottom of the broadband internet connection food chain until those solutions are more widely accessible.

What Is Good Bandwidth?

The answer to this really depends on how you use the internet. Consider how many people are in your home and how often each person uses the internet. Here are some general guidelines.

• Single-person home (one connected device)—5-10Mbps
• 1-2 individuals (multiple device connected)—25-60Mbps
• 3+ individuals—100Mbps-1Gbps

What Is Good Latency?

If the latency is less than 100ms, you should have a fairly seamless experience when browsing the web. Although they could get by with latency below 50ms, gamers will benefit more from latency below 30ms.

Internet Speed Tests

You can test your connection on one of the many online speed tests to get a better idea of your internet speeds. The majority will mostly display your bandwidth, but many will also display your connection latency. When you see your initial bandwidth results from internet speed test, click “Show More Info” to see the latency results.

Combining Bandwidth and Latency

We can examine bandwidth and latency as a single entity now that we are aware of their differences. How many workloads can be handled concurrently depends on bandwidth. How quickly we can handle the workload is indicated by latency. The workload we want to examine, for instance, is a video call that needs 4 Mbps of continuous bandwidth. Despite the minimal bandwidth, the latency must be around 10 milliseconds. In this case, the video call results in a fluid and clear image. If the latency was 80 milliseconds, the video call might function, but the image might be jerky and pixelated. You’ll note that the previous statement only mentioned latency; bandwidth was not mentioned.

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