Feederlag

Feederlag is a term used in information technology and analytics to describe end-to-end delay introduced by a data feeder, the source that supplies data to downstream consumers. The term is typically used in contexts where timely data is critical, such as live trading, real-time analytics, monitoring, or streaming services. It is formed from feeder (the data source) and lag (delay). The expression appears in several languages, notably in Nordic and Germanic regions, where it can refer to delays in any feed of information or media.

In financial markets, feederlag can refer to the latency between a market data feed being produced by an exchange or data provider and its reception by a trading system. In streaming, it denotes the delay between content origin and end-user playback. In sensor networks, it describes the time between a sensor measurement and its availability in analytics dashboards. Feederlag can thus affect the freshness of information, the responsiveness of systems, and user experience.

Measurement and causes: Feederlag is typically described by end-to-end latency, data staleness, and sometimes jitter. Causes include network propagation time, queueing in publishers or brokers, batching or cadence of data generation, and limited processing capacity. Differences in hardware, software stacks, and routing can also contribute.

Mitigation and management: Reducing feederlag involves strategies such as co-locating data sources with consumers, using low-latency networking, adopting streaming or publish-subscribe architectures, increasing processing efficiency, and minimizing batching windows. In practice, organizations balance feederlag against data completeness and reliability.

See also: data latency, feed latency, end-to-end latency. Feederlag is an informal term without a single formal standard definition, but it is widely understood in industries that rely on timely data feeds.