Confusing terms in Networking

There are few technical terms related to networking which are often used in day-to-day language so it becomes necessary to know what they actually mean and also the differences between them.

Sometimes we use online tools to test our network strength and there are often few technical jargons related to it.

Below are a few terms which are often confused.

1. Latency :

It is the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to be captured, transmitted, processed through many devices, then received at its destination, and then decoded to extract information from it. It is dependent on the physical distance between the source and destination, the type of signal used, etc. It is often measured in milliseconds(ms). Always remember latency is the measure of the delay in the round trips.

2. Ping :

Ping is a network utility tool used to check connectivity between two devices but it is often used in place of Latency, like in our example above latency is referred to as ping. In a nutshell, ping is a signal sent to a server to respond and after the server gives a response it travels back to the client and the time elapsed between these two processes is the measure of latency.

3. Lag :

Lag is the effect of high latency, say you are playing an online multiplayer shooting game, and you fired a bullet at your opponent and your opponent also fired a bullet at you at the same time but you got killed, this is due to higher latency in your network as compared to his.

4. Jitter :

Jitter is defined as a variation in the delay of received packets(latency).

5. Bandwidth :

It’s a measure of how much data can be sent and received at a time. Generally, it is measured in Mbps(megabits per second).

6. Data Rate :

It’s a measure of how much data is being sent and received at a time. It is also measured in Mbps and its value can be less than or equal to that of bandwidth for that particular network.

Also note the difference between MBps(Megabytes per second) and Mbps(Megabits per second), in our case network data rate is measured in Mbps which is 1/8 th of MBps so if the download rate of our network is 17.96 Mbps then in MBps, it would be 17.96 / 8 = 2.245 MBps.