What is latency and how it affects your internet connection.

It’s now more than ever that we are dependent on our internet, whether it is video calls or video games, if your network has high latency, it will result in slow internet. No, we aren’t talking about bandwidth here which is different from latency. Do your video calls sometimes get disconnected abruptly? Does a video start buffering while steaming content? That is due to a high latency rate. Latency affects your internet speed. Bandwidth is the amount of data that transmits over a connection in a leased amount of time.
So let us get to know exactly what latency means and what we can do to address it.

What is Latency?

Network latency is the time it takes for data to travel between the source and destination. The lower the latency, the better it is. The Unit to measure both Ping and Latency is milliseconds. While ping refers to the signal sent from the device to the server, latency is the time it takes for the ping to return to the device. A high-speed broadband connection should ideally give you a ping rate of below 50 ms.

The first thing you need to do to check whether you are getting a low ping rate; is to do an online internet speed test. There are many free websites where you can do that, for example www.speedtest.net.

In case you find your network has a high latency rate, don’t fret, there are a few things that might be causing that and if you tackle them, you can reduce your ping rate.

• Using Wireless Internet connections cause a higher latency than wired connections. When possible, use a wired connection.
• Old equipment: Routers can wear out from heat-stress so make sure you change your router every three to four years.
• Too many devices using the same network at the same time for doing things like downloading and streaming can cause a high latency rate.
• Bad or poor network drivers. Drivers may need to be updated or replaced.

While you can take certain measures to reduce latency, the biggest factor in determining your latency is the choice of your ISP and the technology they use to offer broadband services. Hathway offers versatile packages that can suit your work and entertainment needs so you can get the kind of low latency you want. Visit https://www.hathway.com/Broadband/HomeBroadband to learn more about our plans.