What is Low Latency and Its Importance?
Low latency is the minimal delay between a system’s input and its response. For example, when you click a button or give a command, there’s little to no noticeable delay before the system react, usually just a few thousandths of a second (milliseconds).
You are watching the T20 World cup and your favorite team is a touchdown away from winning the cup. You’re waiting for the broadcast after the regular commercial.
But by then, your neighbors start screaming about the victory! Gone. Your screen freezes.
You missed the win in real time. Why?
Because your network was slow. The stream staggers and comes back, yet the moment’s gone!
This occurs when the network faces a delay in delivering the streaming data to your device. This delay is what we call “Latency”
In the post below, let us briefly discuss what latency is, how it can be reduced, and the tools you need to achieve low latency.
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Low Latency vs. High Latency: What’s the Difference?
Response time is the key factor that distinguishes low latency from high latency.
At low latency, data moves quickly and the response feels instantaneous.
On the other hand, at high latency, you’ll experience lags and delays. To be precise, latency is the delay that happens when data travels from your device to a server and back.
What Is Low Latency?
Low latency is defined as the minimal delay that happens between an action and a result.
It is important to maintain a good latency and low jitters so users watching a live video stream, talking over the phone or sending messages have a smooth and responsive experience.
This is especially influential in time-sensitive scenarios where real-time software depend on low latency systems for live-streaming, high-frequency trading, and online gaming.
At any cost, the latency cannot go up during critical remote operations like drone control or medical conversations.
What Is High Latency?
High latency is when the time taken for the data to travel between a request and a response is longer. This eventually makes apps and systems perform slower and sometimes unresponsive, affecting user engagement dramatically.
When the latency is high in websites and web apps, it may slow down the pages and increase bounce rates. Similarly, on calls/messages, the receiver may get the response from the sender after a long gap, causing a huge discomfort during conversations.
What Causes High or Low Latency?
Several factors affect latency:
- Distance: Data takes longer to travel over greater physical distances.
- Connection type: Fiber-optic connections usually have lower latency than wireless or copper.
- Network hops: Each router or switch adds a small delay.
- Network congestion: Heavy traffic can cause bottlenecks and slow responses.
Types Of Latency
While latency is a single factor, the causes of latency are numerous.
There are various reasons for a delay to happen during data transmission.
Based on these reasons, we can group them into 4 different categories.
1. Propagation Delay
A data physically travels from a source to destination. The delay caused during this phase is known as the propagation latency.
2. Transmission Delay
All the data: large and small, has to be pushed into the network for a connection to happen.
The delay which happens when pushing these data is known as the transmission latency or transmission delay.
3. Processing Delay
Once the data enters the network, routers must check the packet headers, and sometimes split the packets. Here, ping works on the ICMP network protocol to measure basic connectivity and response delays.
Later, when the data enters the server, it might take some time to generate a response.
The delay that occurs during these processing phases are termed as processing latency.
4. Queuing Delay
When the network is busy, some data packets must wait in the buffer.
There are scenarios where multiple packets arrive at the same time and a congestion might happen.
This causes the queuing delay, and the prolonged or extreme cases of this delay is known as the buffer bloat. This is one of the severe-impact delays in data transmission.
Importance of Low Latency
As discussed above, not every use case requires the need to maintain latency levels, but if your business is into real-time communications or live streaming then you must ensure your data streaming comes under the ultra-low latency category.
- Because a slight delay in live video calls can hamper your business deals and closures.
- Could disturb the work productivity of your colleagues during a project discussion.
- Your patients can feel exhausted if they experience breaks or lags during a virtual consultation. As telecommunication is all about ease and comfort for patients.
So, how can you keep your latency levels in check? Next, it is!!
What are the Factors Affecting Low Latency?
The streaming latency is affected by several factors and in your quest to achieve low latency for all your video calls or data transfers, you must come over these limitations:
- Bandwidth: If you have a higher bandwidth, your data will travel faster. A higher bandwidth means faster delivery and minimal traffic.
- Use of Encoder: Encoders must be optimized in such a way that it instantly sends a signal to the receiver.
- Optic Fibers: The connection type affects data transmission. We suggest you use optic fibers instead of wireless internet.
- Long Distance: See that you are located at a closer distance from ISP, satellites, and internet hubs. Because long distances can increase the delay.
- File Size: A larger file size takes a long time to transmit data via the internet thereby increasing the streaming latency.
What we saw are some of the factors that demote us from reducing latency. But there are also,
Ways To Improve Low Latency
Simply using strong internet connections, the right infrastructure, maintaining physical distance, and a good encoder can reduce the latency of your live streams.
Additionally, these steps can also improve high latency levels:
- Using smart network interface cards and programmable network switches.
- Identifying and monitoring the IT infrastructure.
- Analyzing the networking issue and investing in cloud infrastructures.
- Use of streaming protocols like WebRTC, RTMP, and FTL for delivering low-latency video streams.
- Use of APIs as any voice or video API providers will make sure to design their codes with minimal latency. So, try to integrate API providers like MirrorFly to your chat platforms for seamless and smooth audio/video transmissions.
- An experienced web developer or skilled tech-stack professional who knows code minification to reduce the loading time. And finally,
- Evaluate which network function can be off-loaded to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).
So far we saw what best can be done to reduce the latency of your live streams, but the actual elephant in the room is the latency solutions for different use cases.
Recommended Reading
Benefits of Low Latency for Different Use Cases
When it comes to real-time applications, the issue with high latency can mostly ruin the potential engagement on a platform. So, it is very important for any application requiring low latency value to retain and improve overall customer engagement.
Here we will see the situations where low latency is called for:
- Online Video Games: Gamers need to chat with their peers instantly and the games they play on any device must reflect the action in real time without any lag. In case of high latency, gamers are not going to stick to your product.
- E-learning: Have you thought about if there is a lag when a live classroom session is on, what will happen to students learning? Then your app will not do any good to their education.
- Healthcare Apps: These days, consultations have gone virtually and patients connect with doctors over a video call. In case they encounter a lag in video reception, they are going to go in person.
- Enterprise Chats: When remote work was a boon, real-time chat apps were in great demand. Voice calls and video calls were of great help to colleagues to manage their project deadlines. A delay due to a network issue is going to burden their workload.
- High-Frequency Trading: Today, low-latency trading in the financial market is a regular practice. It has opened up ways for unique advantages in network services. Here, the latency is used to get the information faster than any other trader.
Wrapping Up
We hope this post helped you learn everything you need to know about low latency. As discussed above, it is important that you choose the SDKs that deliver latencies less than 100 ms, for a lag-free experience.
MirrorFly provides the fastest, lag-free and most-affordable in-app communication SDKs for Android, iOS and web apps. Moreover, we offer both cloud and self-hosted solution, to ensure that you flexibly choose how you customize and deploy your apps. Want to know more about our 100% customizable SDKs? Contact our experts today!
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Low latency is essential for delivering smooth, fast, and responsive user experiences and allowing participants to communicate without any delays in real time. If the issues related to high latency persist on using an application then users can get frustrated and shift to another application permanently.
Yes. Low latency is usually considered to be the best as users can communicate with each other or with the application without any delays or lags. Additionally, having a low latency level of anywhere between 40 to 60 ms is highly acceptable as it can improve the overall user experience and help deliver fast and seamless responses.
A low latency video is a video content that has a very low delay between when an image or video is captured in the camera and when it is displayed to viewers. In general, a low latency video is said to have a latency of less than 1 second and to achieve this level, many protocols like WebRTCs and DASH are often used.
Some of the best ways to reduce video latency and improve the quality of video calls are by increasing the bandwidth, using high-quality hardware such as high-resolution camera, using a video encoder and decoder, planting a CDN to reduce the distance between server and viewer, and using adaptive streaming protocols like HLS, DASH, and WebRTC.
A good latency speed is the shortest duration a data takes to reach the destination from the source. The lower the latency, then better the performance and a latency rate of below 100ms is considered to be great for real-time applications.
You can take the following steps to improve the video latency:
- Increasing the bandwidth and internet speed
- Moving closing to a server
- Restarting or replacing your router
- Using a CDN to distribute traffic
- If possible use a wired connection instead of a Wi-Fi
- And, improving the encoding process with the help of a codec
Further Reading
- How to Build A Flutter Video Call App in 2026?
- Video communication: what it is and how it works?
- How to Build a React JS Video Chat App in 2026?
- How to Build an Android Voice and Video Calling App Using Java?
- Communication APIs: Top 7 In-app Chat, Voice & Video APIs
- WebRTC Video Call API: The Definitive Guide
A technical content writer specializing in Real-time Communication Solutions, adept at making complex concepts easy to understand.