A measure of delay in a network, representing the time required for a data packet to travel from one point to another. In networking, it is usually measured in milliseconds as round-trip time. High latency causes sluggish application performance and ruins real-time communications like voice calls or video conferencing, regardless of how much bandwidth is available.
We need to route the VoIP traffic over the new fiber link to get the latency under 50 milliseconds.
Bandwidth is the width of the pipe, while latency is the length of the pipe. You can have a massive gigabit connection that still feels slow if the latency is high.
Related terms
Round-trip time
The total time required for a data packet to travel from a source to a destination and for the acknowledgment to return.
Jitter
The variation in the delay of received packets or the deviation of a digital signal from its precise timing.
Lagging
Experiencing noticeable delay between a user input and the corresponding network response.