What is latency?

Latency is the time that passes between a user activity and the resulting response. Network latency refers specifically to delays that take place inside a network, or on the Internet. In practical terms, latency is the time between a user activity and the response from the website or application to this activity – for instance, the delay between when a user clicks a connect to a webpage and when the browser shows that webpage.

In spite of the fact that data on the Internet travels at the speed of light, the effects of distance and delays caused by internet infrastructure equipment mean that latency can never be eliminated completely. It can and should, however, be minimized. A high measure of latency results in poor website performance, negatively affects SEO, and can induce users to leave the site or application altogether.

What causes internet latency?

One of the chief causes of network latency is distance, specifically the distance between client devices making requests and the servers responding to those requests. On the off chance that a website is hosted in a data center in Columbus, Ohio, it will respond decently fast to requests from users in Cincinnati (around 100 miles away), likely inside 10-15 milliseconds. Users in Los Angeles (around 2,200 miles away), then again, will face longer delays, closer to 50 milliseconds.

An increase of a few milliseconds may not seem like a great deal, however this is compounded by all the to and fro correspondence necessary for the client and server to establish a connection, the complete size and burden time of the page, and any problems with the network equipment the data passes through en route. The measure of time it takes for a response to reach a client device after a client request is known as round trip time (RTT).

Data traversing the Internet for the most part needs to cross one, yet multiple networks. The more networks that a HTTP response needs to go through, the more opportunities there are for delays. For example, as data packets cross between networks, they experience Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). There, routers have to process and route the data packets, and now and again routers may need to break them up into smaller packets, all of which adds a few milliseconds to RTT.

What's more, the manner in which webpages are constructed can cause moderate performance. Webpages that feature a ton of heavy content or burden content from multiple outsiders may perform slowly, because browsers have to download large files so as to show them. A user could be directly next to the data center facilitating the website they're accessing, yet on the off chance that the website features multiple high-definition images (for example), there may even now be some latency as the images load.

Network latency, throughput, and bandwidth

Latency, bandwidth, and throughput are totally interrelated, however they all measure different things. Bandwidth is the most extreme measure of data that can go through the network at some random time. Throughput is the average measure of data that really passes through over a given period of time. Throughput isn't necessarily equivalent to bandwidth, because it's affected by latency. Latency is a measurement of time, not of how much data is downloaded over time.

In what manner would latency be able to be reduced?

Use of a CDN (content delivery network) is a significant step towards reducing latency. A CDN caches static content to inconceivably reduce the RTT. (The Cloudflare CDN makes it possible to cache dynamic content too with Cloudflare Workers.) CDN servers are distributed in multiple areas so content is stored closer to end users and does not need to travel as far to reach them. This means that stacking a webpage will take less time, improving website speed and performance.

Web developers can likewise minimize the number of render-blocking resources (stacking JavaScript last, for example), optimize images for faster stacking, and reduce file sizes wherever possible. Code minification is one method for reducing the size of JavaScript and CSS files.

It is possible to reduce perceived latency by strategically stacking certain assets first. A webpage can be configured to stack the above-the-overlap area of a page first so users can begin interacting with the page even before it finishes stacking (above the crease refers to what appears in a browser window before the user looks down). Webpages can likewise stack assets just as they are needed, utilizing a technique known as languid stacking. These approaches don't really improve network latency, yet they do improve the user's perception of page speed.

In what capacity would users be able to fix latency on their end?

Sometimes, network latency is caused by issues on the user's side, not the server side. Consumers consistently have the alternative of buying more bandwidth if latency is a consistent issue, despite the fact that bandwidth isn't a guarantee of website performance. Changing to Ethernet instead of WiFi will result in a more consistent internet connection and commonly improves internet speed. Users ought to likewise make sure their internet equipment is cutting-edge by applying firmware updates regularly and replacing equipment altogether as necessary.

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