Bandwidth is akin to number of lanes on an interstate, latency is how long it takes each car to go from point A to B (or X, or wherever you’re measuring to).
Technically, bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower frequencies in a continuous band of frequencies. It is typically measured in unit of hertz (so how “wide” is the signal) - in ye olden days the signal width corresponded to transmission capacity.
While latency is a measure of how long a specified bit of data took to transit a system, especially when compared against the “ideal” performance of the system.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
I’m going to use some descriptive metaphors to explain this as best I can. Apologies to my fellow Lemmy nerds for the small inaccuracies this might create, but I think I can get the basic point across in plain language.
Bandwidth is how much data can flow over a rate of time. It is similar to a water pipe—a bigger pipe can flow more water into your home, and a smaller one will flow less. If we’re comparing internet data to water, downloading a file is like filling up a bucket until the bucket is full and it is a complete bucket of water. Bigger files are like bigger buckets—you need more water (data) to fill them.
In the case of streaming a video, the bucket has a hole in the bottom because the playing of the video is the equivalent of the water being used and discarded. The flow of data needs to be faster than the play rate of the video (the drain rate of the hole in this case), otherwise the video will pause because it has not received the next section of data to play that video content (the bucket runs out of water). In the 90’s, we all had really small internet “pipes”, so sending data could not happen very quickly, and thus sending video that could be streamed was very difficult (or in many cases, impossible).
Now let’s talk about latency. Internet is unlike a water pipe in that not any old data will do—it has to be that specific data from that specific server.
In plain language, latency is the amount of time it takes to send a signal from a server to your computer and back.
Your computer has to contact that server and tell it “I need YOU to send me water.” The server has to react to that and start sending you the data, but the server has its own pipes to contend with, and it has other requests from other water users it needs to deliver too. If their pipes are slow, or they have too many requests, then the data will not flow to you quickly. If the data does not flow to you quickly, it will not outrun the play rate of the video, and the video will pause.
I hope that helped you gain a basic understanding of these concepts—I did my best. I welcome any other nerds out there to chime in if I misrepresented anything too much.
LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 6 days ago
That means, if l wish to catch up with the live action of FIFA World Cup on the internet, it needs a high bandwidth and high latency. We watch all our TV channels and movies on Jio airfiber, which is an internet connection. It involves very high bandwidth and latency.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Close. High bandwidth, low latency.
High amount of data able to stream, low time to communicate with the server.
LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 6 days ago
Video compression would be an interesting area to study.