IT lexicon Networking Latency

Latency

Networking På svenska → Updated: 2026-05-23

The delay between sending something and getting the response. Measured in milliseconds.

Different from bandwidth: latency is how long a byte has to travel, bandwidth is how many bytes can travel at once.

Stockholm–Stockholm: ~5 ms. Stockholm–US East Coast: ~100 ms. Stockholm–Australia: ~280 ms. The speed of light sets a hard floor — you can't go meaningfully faster than physics allows.

← Back to the lexicon