Latency
Latency is how fast data is moving. How quickly does it get from point A to point B? (And it’s generally measured in milliseconds.)
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Data packet
A data packet can either be a chunk of your game, some code, a specific file, or any random data you want to send to someone. So for your game, this’ll be the data of your game’s sessions (for example, a player’s position, what actions they take, etc).
Data packets help send your game’s sessions across the internet
It’s mainly due to bandwidth. Those copper wires and fibre optics only have so much room to carry your files. The bigger and better the bandwidth, the more data packets you can send. Having low latency helps, as this means those packets can travel faster, too.
Each packet is wrapped with metadata
All of that data lumped together is wrapped in meta data – instructions for how the data should be handled and put back together on the other side.
Related Terms
Data center
A data center is a building or place which you’d use to store all of your servers. They house any critical or large amounts of data, but you’d also use them to process and manage all of that data.
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