Latency can actually be increased by a fair number of different factors, including:
- Network Hardware – For example, some routers can only transmit data at limited rates, and may have limited processing power.
Wireless networks will generally have increased latency due to wireless interference, distance between devices, and the lack of stability that comes with a wired connection. For example, walls will slow down your WiFi.
- Network Software and Configuration – Software Firewalls that are improperly set, quality of service settings, or Network Address Translation (NAT) settings can delay the transmission of data
- Location – The largest and most common cause of latency is distance. The further away, the longer it will take to transmit that data.
- Congestion – Think of your network as a highway, and data packets as cars. Bandwidth is the size of the road, network speed is how fast the cars are driving, and latency is the congestion caused by the extra traffic. Management allows you to avoid oversubscription.
The more data being transmitted, in relation to the network’s capacity, the slower it goes. This generally means your network is being overloaded (too many video calls, conference calls, VoIP calls, netflixing, music streaming, etc.) or your business does not have enough oversubscription to handle normal everyday internet traffic.