Imagine your business sends a data packet from a server in in New York City to an end user in Barcelona. Even with today’s network speeds, there will still be a slight delay in the amount of time it takes for the data to reach its destination. This delay is referred to as latency.
Latency, in other words, can be defined as a measure of the delay in the arrival of data, measured in milliseconds (ms). In some cases, latency may not be noticeable to end users. But when latency becomes excessive, it can lead to performance issues like high ping rates in online games, sluggish and unresponsive websites and apps, and stuttering video calls with dropped frames.
Unfortunately, there is no way to eliminate latency entirely — at least not yet. But there are steps you can take to minimize its impact and prevent it from disrupting important communications.
In this post, we’ll explain the following:
· How latency differs from terms like speed, bandwidth, and throughput
· Common causes of latency
· Tips for reducing latency
· How Zenlayer can help overcome latency challenges and boost digital experience
How latency is different from speed, bandwidth, and throughput
First, it’s important to understand that latency is different from similar terms like speed, bandwidth, and throughput. Although all three are measured in bits per second — like megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps) — there are some key differences:
· Speed is often used interchangeably with bandwidth, especially by internet service providers (ISPs). It’s not a strict term, however, so speed can refer to various actual or theoretical measurements.
· Bandwidth is the theoretical limit of how much data can be transferred over a specific amount of time within an ideal networking environment.
· Throughput describes the measured rate of data transfer over a period of time, which includes latency, bandwidth, and other impacting factors.
To visualize how these terms relate to one another, picture a busy highway full of traffic (see below image).
In this example, our goal is to improve throughput to move the blue car to its destination as quickly as possible so that the driver can get to their appointment.
• The road (network) has a speed limit of 75 mph (theoretical speed). However, there are too many vehicles and not enough lanes (low bandwidth). As a result, everyone is moving at roughly 10 mph. So instead of getting to its appointment at 3 p.m. as expected, the blue car’s arrival will now be significantly delayed (high latency).
• This is exactly what happens when you attempt to transmit data on a network with low bandwidth. The result is almost always high latency and low throughput. But by adding more lanes (increasing bandwidth bandwidth), it becomes possible for more cars (data) to move at once so the blue car can now make its appointment with nearly no delays (low latency). Even with the same number of cars from the first example, everyone moves faster (high throughput) because there’s now more room to maneuver around the backed-up lanes and slower cars.
• Achieving a high network throughput requires both high bandwidth and low latency. Increasing bandwidth is as easy as upgrading your hardware or internet package, but lowering latency isn’t quite as simple.
What causes high latency? Top factors to know about
Distance
Any time you send a message to someone, the data must travel over a vast network of physical, subterrestrial and subaquatic wires and cables. This type of latency is very difficult to overcome because digital communications are still bound by the laws of physics. In short, the longer the physical distance that data must travel, the longer it takes to get there.
Another factor that compounds this type of latency is whether the networks carrying your traffic have established peering agreements. As we explain on the Zenlayer blog, peering is the process by which two networks interconnect and exchange traffic. If the networks along the way don’t play well with each other, traffic will be directed through more scenic routes that further add to its delay. Data traversing through multiple networks are also more likely to be bottlenecked by compounded inefficiencies across all involved networks.
Hardware
Unoptimized network hardware can also contribute to latency and disrupt communications. For example, if your router isn’t equipped to handle heavy traffic, it won’t be able to quickly process incoming or outgoing data. When traffic comes at a faster rate than your router can handle, data gets queued within a buffer to await processing, causing delays.
Likewise, if your server’s CPU receives higher demand than it is capable of handling, its performance can degrade as it struggles to execute overflowing processes.
Because of this, it’s important to make sure business network is up to date with the latest network infrastructure and capable of handling sudden traffic spikes.
Congestion
As the above example demonstrates, bandwidth impacts latency and throughput. If your network has high bandwidth, it’s possible to transfer more data at once. This applies both to your network and that of your destination server.
For example, if your cap is lower than the server from which you’re receiving traffic, that server will have to slow down to accommodate your congested network, and vice versa. Having too many locally connected devices can also cause congestion from overcrowded communications.
Public networks are another common source of congestion, especially during peak traffic hours between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. when the majority of internet users are active. If you share a physical space with an office building, or if most of your region uses the same ISP, you’ll likely experience network congestion.
When networks become overly congested, this tends to produce jitter which leads to voice and video stutters during calls. Jitter can cause a phone line to drop, or incoming voice messages to sound garbled.
Content
Website content can also increase latency for visitors. Websites containing complex code and pages with videos, plugins, and large files are at a higher risk for slow load times.
Ideally, it should take a website 1–2 seconds to load. If your website takes longer, users are much more likely to abandon it.
Tips for reducing latency
Although latency is virtually impossible to eliminate entirely, there are proactive steps you can take reduce the problem and generate stronger digital experiences.
1. Reduce network congestion
First, you should look for ways to reduce congestion on your network. Here are some examples of how you can accomplish this.
· Leverage a private global backbone network: One of the best ways to reduce network congestion is to bypass the public internet and leverage a private global backbone network which acts like an express lane for the internet. Putting your mission-critical apps on a global private backbone gives your users a direct route to your services unburdened by public network congestion, resulting in improved uptime and user experience.
· Host content through a CDN: You can also reduce network congestion by consulting with a content delivery network (CDN) provider to host your oversized images, videos, and other media instead of loading them from your own servers.
· Purchase additional bandwidth: Upgrading your internet package can be an option if inadequate bandwidth is the primary reason for your network woes. While this requires paying a little bit more, it should improve the reliability and availability of your applications and services.
2. Update your hardware
Next, consult with your IT team and make sure your network hardware is up to date and capable of meeting the needs of your organization.
· Upgrade your devices: Paying more for a better plan with a higher bandwidth won’t help all that much if your router is struggling to handle heavy traffic volumes. It’s a good idea to check that your other devices and firmware are up to date and optimized to handle your business’s bandwidth and processing needs. This is critical for preventing network bottlenecks.
· Try renting servers: Most businesses today are looking to reduce IT costs due to lingering economic uncertainties. This can make it difficult to upgrade or replace network infrastructure. You can reduce heavy CAPEX by renting servers from a trusted service provider, offering optimized infrastructure at a lower cost than owning it outright.
3. Optimize web content
You’ll also want to analyze your web content and look for ways to maximize efficiency.
· Reduce file sizes and dimensions: Large videos and images typically consume the most bandwidth on websites. One thing you can do is compress your media to provide a smoother browsing experience. If your files are still too large after compressing them, you can try cropping image, and trimming non-essential parts of videos. In some places, you may also be able to link to videos and host them on a site like YouTube. Scaling your media to a reasonable dimension can also make a big difference.
· Clean up codes, scripts, and plugins: When a website’s code gets too long and messy, visitors may experience protracted load times that can drastically bump up your bounce rate. At the same time, using too many JavaScript and CSS elements can increase latency for new visitors as their browser attempts to load all the files (and media) at once. Enabling browser caching may improve some latency issues for returning visitors. But to truly improve experience for all users, it’s a good idea to clean up your code and eliminate any resource-heavy plugins. Using a cleaning tool like a code minifier can help to streamline your page and improve page load time by stripping the whitespaces, comments, and other non-critical snippets from your code.
4. Reduce geographical distance
If your business is engaging in cross-border data transfers, then you’ll also need to find ways to reduce long-haul data exchanges.
· Compute at the edge: Many cross-border businesses today have distributed userbases that are spread across one or more continents. Such organizations should consider hosting latency-intensive apps and services at the edge of the network, close to end users in key markets. This distance-based latency by moving what users are trying to reach to where they are located.
As we point out in another post, compute servers comes in two primary flavors including bare metal and virtual machines (VMs). Bare metal is a physical server that you’d rent from a service provider in a location that’s close to your users. VM is a virtualized, logical partition of a physical server that’s nearly identical in function to bare metal. The main difference between the two is that when you rent a bare metal server, you’re the only tenant on that machine and retain full control of your instance, whereas a VM might share tenancy with other VMs hosted on the same machine, limiting the scope of your control.
· Distribute with a CDN: If your latency issues are multifactorial, as they often are, then you should also consider adding a content delivery network (CDN) to your overall solution. A CDN is a group of geographically distributed servers that cache content close to users for quick access.
CDN providers store cached files (such as images or videos) from your origin server in data centers around the world. Content requests are then routed to the data centers nearest to users for quick delivery. Keep in mind that although they are distributed similarly to edge compute servers, standard CDN servers are used for storage and lack the flexibility and general compute capabilities of bare metal and virtual machines. CDN is designed to deliver large amounts of content to your users faster whereas bare metal and virtual machines let you deploy applications closer to your users, easily scale your resources, and can be customized to serve as anything you’d need in terms of compute function.
Make latency a non-factor with Zenlayer
Controlling latency is much easier with the help of a trusted partner like Zenlayer. Organizations across multiple industries like gaming, streaming, finance, and blockchain are now relying on Zenlayer’s advanced suite of compute and networking services to minimize latency and boost digital experience.
Our global network of 290+ points of presence (PoPs) and 5400+ peers will enable you to position apps and services closer to your users for premium digital experiences.
If you’re looking to decrease latency and increase your revenue, be sure to talk to a solution expert today!
