Latencj

Latencj is a term commonly encountered as a misspelling or truncated form of the Polish noun latencja, which translates to latency in English. Latency refers to the time interval between a stimulus, input, or request and the corresponding response or effect. In information technology, latency is a key performance metric describing delays in systems and networks.

In computing and networking, latency is often measured in milliseconds and can describe one-way or round-trip delay. Common variants include network latency, storage latency, CPU latency, and user-perceived input latency in interactive systems. Factors contributing to latency include propagation delay (signal travel time), transmission delay (data rate), processing delay (computation time), queueing delay in buffers, and protocol overhead.

Measurement and implications: Latency is typically measured with specialized tools such as ping for network latency, tracing, or benchmarking suites. High latency degrades interactivity, causes buffering in streaming, and can affect time-sensitive applications like online gaming or real-time control.

Reduction strategies: Reducing latency involves optimizing software paths, deploying faster hardware, minimizing hops and network routing, increasing bandwidth where appropriate, enabling edge computing, implementing caching, and tuning protocols to reduce overhead. In QoS-enabled networks, prioritization can lower latency for critical traffic.

See also: latency, bandwidth, throughput, jitter, quality of service, edge computing.