roundtrip

A round trip is a journey from a starting point to a destination and back to the starting point. It is used in travel, logistics, and other fields to describe bidirectional movement.

In travel, a round-trip ticket covers both directions between two endpoints and is often priced lower than two one-way tickets. Return dates may be fixed, and some fares include restrictions or blackout periods.

In computing and networking, round-trip describes a path that goes from a host to a destination and back. Round-trip time (RTT) measures the elapsed time for this journey and is a key metric for latency and TCP performance. Factors include distance, routing, congestion, and processing delays.

The term also appears in data exchange and software processes, such as round-trip data binding or round-trip engineering, referring to two-way synchronization between models, code, or systems. In API design and integration, round-trip communication helps ensure consistency across components.