STREAMING GLOSSARY
Definitions, examples and related terms for this part of your viewing setup.
TERMS & EXAMPLES
Bandwidth commonly describes the capacity available to carry data over a connection or link. A home internet package may advertise a maximum rate, while an individual streaming device can face a lower practical limit through Wi-Fi, congestion or another bottleneck. Stable delivery to the actual source matters as well as the connection's headline capacity.
Read more →Throughput is the amount of data successfully transferred over a period of time. It reflects practical delivery under the conditions measured, rather than only a link's advertised capacity. Throughput can change with network congestion, device performance, protocol behaviour and the server or test endpoint involved, so measurements need context when diagnosing playback problems.
Read more →Latency is delay between an action or data event and its corresponding result at another point in a system. Network tools often measure a particular round-trip delay, while viewing delay includes production, encoding, buffering and display processing too. These measurements answer different questions and should not be treated as one universal performance score.
Read more →Jitter is variation in timing rather than simply a consistently long delay. Network packets or media delivery can arrive less evenly under changing conditions, and playback systems use buffering to absorb some variation. Too much variation relative to the available buffer or real-time deadline can disrupt otherwise sufficient average data delivery to the viewing device.
Read more →Packet loss occurs when data packets do not successfully reach the intended receiving stage of a network exchange. Its effects depend on the transport and application: some systems resend missing information, while others conceal or skip it. Loss can arise at different points and does not by itself identify a particular router, provider or server as the cause.
Read more →Congestion occurs when traffic demand exceeds what a network resource can handle comfortably, creating queues, drops or reduced delivery rates. It can happen inside the home, on an internet access link or elsewhere along a route. The location matters: changing a player setting cannot universally remove competition for an overloaded network resource.
Read more →Bufferbloat describes excessive delay caused by large queues filling in a network device or connection. A transfer may continue moving substantial data while interactive traffic waits behind queued packets. Appropriate queue management can help in supported equipment, but the term should be used for a measured or well-supported queueing problem rather than every case of slow playback.
Read more →Quality of service refers to mechanisms used to manage how different traffic is treated under network constraints. Supported equipment can classify, prioritise or otherwise schedule traffic according to its configuration. QoS does not create extra internet capacity, and settings on one home device cannot guarantee treatment by every other network along a media delivery path.
Read more →Maximum transmission unit is the largest packet size a particular link can carry without a different fragmentation or handling arrangement. Paths can involve links with different limits, so endpoints need a suitable effective packet size. MTU problems can affect some connections or resources while leaving simpler traffic working, but they require careful diagnosis rather than random tuning.
Read more →Retransmission sends data again after a system detects or infers that earlier delivery was unsuccessful or incomplete. Reliable transports and some applications use recovery mechanisms that include retransmission. Resending can preserve correct data, but it consumes time and capacity; the viewer's buffer and deadlines determine whether that recovery becomes visible during playback.
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