Data communication
Guess first
Why a truck of hard drives beats your internet
Most students get this wrong: the fastest way to move 100 TB isn't a cable.
Quick check · tap an answer to continue
Lesson notes
Key points
- A truck full of drives carries enormous data per trip, so its throughput, meaning data delivered per second, can beat a typical internet link.
- Latency is the delay before the first bit arrives, while bandwidth is how much flows per second, and they are independent.
Definitions
- Latency
- The time for one bit to travel from sender to receiver, independent of how many bits per second the link carries.
Takeaway: Bandwidth is volume per second; latency is delay.
Quick check: Which moves 100 TB from Tarkwa to Accra fastest?
- A fast fibre link
- A 5G mobile link
- A truck of hard drives
High bandwidth and low latency are different things.
ThroughputLatency vs bandwidth
Lessons like this, for your syllabus.
Short narrated study videos written for your course, level and exam. Free to start.
Get lessons for your own syllabus