Latency Vs Response Time (2024)

Latency Vs Response Time

Many of us have been guilty of using the above two terms synonymously although they are a whole lot different.

Latency refers to the delay in the system, while the response time includes both the delays and the actual processing time.

Latencyis the time duration in which a request is waiting to be handled. Until the request is handled, it is latent which means it's inactive. A high latency indicates issues in the network or probably an overloaded server. Latency consists of only the delays- i.e the time the request is waiting to be handled. There are different types of latency like network and storage latency. It can be encountered over the web or while querying the database.

Response time is the time between a client sending a request and receiving a response.

Response time = Processing Time + Round trip Latency

Processing timeis the time taken by the server from receivingthe last byteof the request and returningthe first byteof the response. It does not include the time it takes the request to get from the client to the server or the time it takes to get from the server back to the client.

Response timeis the total time it takes for the web service to respond to the sent request, including all networking latencies. It is the sum of processing time and encountered latencies.