Throughput vs Latency in Performance of API or Applications

Throughput vs Latency in Performance of API or Applications

🔴 Throughput:

👉🏻 In performance testing, "throughput" refers to the number of units of work completed or processed in a given period of time. It measures the rate at which a system can handle incoming requests or transactions.

👉🏻 Throughput is typically expressed in terms of transactions per second (TPS), requests per second (RPS), or bytes per second. Higher throughput indicates better system performance and scalability.

👉🏻 Imagine you are conducting performance testing for a web server. The throughput of the web server is measured in terms of the number of HTTP requests it can handle per second. If the web server can handle 1000 HTTP requests per second, its throughput is 1000 RPS.

🔴 Latency:

👉🏻 "Latency," on the other hand, refers to the time delay between initiating a request and receiving a response. It is a measure of the time taken for data to travel from the source to the destination.

👉🏻 Latency can be affected by various factors such as network congestion, server processing time, and data transmission speed. In performance testing, latency is a critical metric as it directly impacts the user experience.

👉🏻 For instance, in a video streaming service, high latency can result in buffering delays and a poor viewing experience for users.

👉🏻 Now, let's discuss latency in the context of the same web server. Latency measures the time delay between sending an HTTP request to the server and receiving the corresponding HTTP response. If the average latency for the web server is 100 milliseconds, it means that, on average, it takes 100 milliseconds for the server to process and respond to each HTTP request.

Notes:

In summary, throughput measures the rate at which a system can process incoming requests, while latency measures the time delay experienced by individual requests. Both throughput and latency are important metrics in performance testing and are used to evaluate the responsiveness and efficiency of a system under different workloads.

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