latencyconsistency
Latencyconsistency, sometimes written latency consistency, is a property of a system describing the stability of end-to-end latencies across requests and over time. It measures how predictable delays are, not just how small they are on average. High latency consistency means most requests experience similar delays, while low consistency shows wide variation or jitter.
Metrics and measurement: Common metrics include p95 and p99 latency, median latency, mean latency, standard deviation,
Causes: Network congestion, queueing delays, server load, garbage collection pauses, context switches, route changes, and hardware
Implications: In interactive applications such as online gaming, dashboards, or financial trading, latency consistency improves user
Techniques to improve: Capacity planning and overprovisioning; quality of service and traffic shaping; pacing and smoothing
Trade-offs: Improving consistency can trade off some average latency or throughput and may increase cost or
Related concepts: latency, jitter, quality of service, deterministic networking, and tail latency in distributed systems.