4 ms·

bandwidth is only one dimension. what about latency for example?

Dylan16807 4y ago
What about it? We're talking about how many players can go into an online game. Latency doesn't change as you tweak that number, only bandwidth.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  >Latency doesn't change as you tweak that number, only bandwidth. Uuuh, actually it does. https://updater.com/guides/bandwidth-vs-latency https://updater.com/guides/bandwidth-vs-latency >Comparing bandwidth and latency >Bandwidth is the amount of data your connection can handle, whereas latency refers to delays that impact how quickly data gets to your devices. Even though they’re very different, they are related in one important way: If you have less bandwidth, you may have more latency. This is because if your internet connection can only transmit a certain amount of data per second, such as 5 megabits, files that are larger than that will take longer to get to your browser. >Here’s another way of looking at it: While bandwidth affects latency, latency doesn’t affect bandwidth. Returning to the freeway example, the width of the road itself is like your bandwidth, and the cars are like the data that has to travel from one point to another. If the police set up a checkpoint on the freeway, it doesn’t matter how many lanes it has. It’s going to take longer for the cars to reach their destination. >It’s the same with bandwidth and latency in your internet connection. No matter how many megabits your ISP allows you to download per second, if the data has to pause for a security inspection or take detours through multiple locations, you’re going to experience latency.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > file transfer paragraph It's a continuous stream of data. If you want to conceptualize it as "files", then you can consider each "file" as either sub-kilobyte, or sub-frame-length. With the former, there is exactly zero change on latency, and with the latter there is a handful of milliseconds. In other words, bandwidth only affects the portion of latency between receiving the first byte and receiving the last byte. In this situation that's so tiny it's negligible. The latency to the first byte is what matters, and that number is basically independent of the bandwidth. > freeway paragraph, last paragraph If the police set up a "checkpoint" then that is directly going to delay packets. Obviously that changes latency. That has nothing to do with bandwidth though. The same with "data has to pause for a security inspection or take detours through multiple locations". I'm not sure why you quoted this part. But let's consider a freeway that goes down to one lane (or alternatively that we 10x the number of cars we have), which is a bandwidth change. Well, we're sending a fixed amount of cars per second down the freeway. If they can't fit into one lane, then the whole thing will immediately back up and we'll lose connection entirely. It doesn't affect latency, it drops the connection.

What about it? We're talking about how many players can go into an online game. Latency doesn't change as you tweak that number, only bandwidth.

DonHopkins 4y ago
>Latency doesn't change as you tweak that number, only bandwidth. Uuuh, actually it does. https://updater.com/guides/bandwidth-vs-latency https://updater.com/guides/bandwidth-vs-latency >Comparing bandwidth and latency >Bandwidth is the amount of data your connection can handle, whereas latency refers to delays that impact how quickly data gets to your devices. Even though they’re very different, they are related in one important way: If you have less bandwidth, you may have more latency. This is because if your internet connection can only transmit a certain amount of data per second, such as 5 megabits, files that are larger than that will take longer to get to your browser. >Here’s another way of looking at it: While bandwidth affects latency, latency doesn’t affect bandwidth. Returning to the freeway example, the width of the road itself is like your bandwidth, and the cars are like the data that has to travel from one point to another. If the police set up a checkpoint on the freeway, it doesn’t matter how many lanes it has. It’s going to take longer for the cars to reach their destination. >It’s the same with bandwidth and latency in your internet connection. No matter how many megabits your ISP allows you to download per second, if the data has to pause for a security inspection or take detours through multiple locations, you’re going to experience latency.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > file transfer paragraph It's a continuous stream of data. If you want to conceptualize it as "files", then you can consider each "file" as either sub-kilobyte, or sub-frame-length. With the former, there is exactly zero change on latency, and with the latter there is a handful of milliseconds. In other words, bandwidth only affects the portion of latency between receiving the first byte and receiving the last byte. In this situation that's so tiny it's negligible. The latency to the first byte is what matters, and that number is basically independent of the bandwidth. > freeway paragraph, last paragraph If the police set up a "checkpoint" then that is directly going to delay packets. Obviously that changes latency. That has nothing to do with bandwidth though. The same with "data has to pause for a security inspection or take detours through multiple locations". I'm not sure why you quoted this part. But let's consider a freeway that goes down to one lane (or alternatively that we 10x the number of cars we have), which is a bandwidth change. Well, we're sending a fixed amount of cars per second down the freeway. If they can't fit into one lane, then the whole thing will immediately back up and we'll lose connection entirely. It doesn't affect latency, it drops the connection.