Network delay

Network delayis a design and performance characteristic of atelecommunications network.It specifies thelatencyfor a bit of data to travel across the network from onecommunication endpointto another.It is typically measured in multiples or fractions of a second. Delay may differ slightly, depending on the location of the specific pair of communicating endpoints. Engineers usually report both the maximum and average delay, and they divide the delay into several parts:

• Processing delay– time it takes a router to process the packet header
• Queuing delay– time the packet spends in routing queues
• Transmission delay– time it takes to push the packet's bits onto the link
• Propagation delay– time for a signal to propagate through the media

Graphical depiction of contributions to network delay

A certain minimum level of delay is experienced by signals due to the time it takes totransmita packet serially through alink.This delay is extended by more variable levels of delay due tonetwork congestion.IP networkdelays can range from a few milliseconds to several hundred milliseconds.

See also

• Age of Information
• End-to-end delay
• Lag (video games)
• Latency (engineering)
• Minimum-Pairs Protocol
• Round-trip delay

External links

• Impact of Delay in Voice over IP Services(PDF),retrieved2018-10-31
• Internet Delay Space Study at Rice University(PDF),retrieved2018-10-31