What is Network Latency?

In short, network latency is the round-trip time it takes for a signal to reach a destination server and return to the starting point. However, the connection usually follows routes that require in most cases to go through more computers to reach the desired point on the way there and back. Generally, the routes are established without the user's knowledge, automatically and without optimization, resulting in a non-negotiable and fixed delay (in addition, the bandwidth of each of the parties influences the final time). Other influential and unpredictable details are the real-time network congestion at each of the points along the route, which can increase latency and packets loss ostensibly since the routes do not change according to the state of each of the waypoints.

Technology markets are growing steadily. But according to the Forbes Technology Council, solving latency challenges has never been more critical.

As network availability and performance is essential to customer satisfaction in these growing industries, latency ruins their potential. This is especially true in markets where high latency causes transactions to fail or lead to service downtime.

Gartner estimates network downtime costs the average enterprise $5,600 per minute, which is over $330k per hour.

With over 1,000 outages happening every month, it’s quite a costly problem.

That’s part of the reason why solving these network issues could unlock unprecedented growth in industries, such as:

• Software (24.3% CAGR and estimated to become a $733 billion market by 2028)
• Gaming (The Global Gaming industry value now exceeds $300 Billion)
• Metaverse (A potential $8 trillion to $13 trillion opportunity by 2030)
• Telecommunications (The IT sector spends 1.33 Trillion USD on telecommunication services)

However, these industries must solve technologically complex problems to reduce latency and network unavailability.

Unpredictible troubles against latency

On this basis, one of the main causes of high latency is distance. Therefore, as the distance between the source and the server increases, so does the number of intermediaries. These crossings have their individual bottlenecks that add a small amount of delay to the overall latency, and are much more unpredictable the more intermediaries there are in the path.

What can be done to prevent these unpredictable delays?

What the current Internet allows us to do on a regular basis in order to reduce these unexpectedly high latencies is practically nothing. A fixed route means relying on surprises and that is why dynamic routing is needed. However, there is a software stack available that combines different configurations to combat this. Updating the entire Internet instantaneously is totally impossible. Therefore, dynamic solutions have been found to solve latency and packet loss problems among other lesser known problems. Syntropy has arrived to combat these inefficiencies of the current and ossified internet, in a dynamic and flexible way without the need for the current internet to change completely.

Gaming & Metaverse

Gaming Gaming has become a more popular industry than movies and music combined. Over 2.7 billion people now regularly play video games. Their biggest headache? Lag, also known as latency. Plus, as the Metaverse is gaining popularity, concerns rise for its viability on the current Internet infrastructure.

Gamers don’t need to be introduced to the problems of high latency. Lag takes the #1 spot on most gamers’ blame list when losing online games. But there are real issues with latency that becoming a better player won’t solve.

As the industry expands and more gamers than ever share the same infrastructure, past annoyances turn into market-crashing issues.

For example, a recent 73-hour service outage caused by network congestion cost the company Roblox $25 million in lost transactions.

Google’s Stadia, which promised an affordable and seamless cloud gaming experience, is falling short of expectations. Some reports even claim that Google is trying to ditch the original plan and turn its focus from video games toward online demos and “playable experiences.”

Then there’s Meta…

Mark Zuckerberg warned everyone that the Metaverse won’t even be possible with the high latency infrastructure of today.

Because Metaverse applications require way more bandwidth than current games, researchers estimate the Metaverse will need 2 to 5 Gbps Internet bandwidth to work well. That’s about 100X of the current 50 Mbps standards of today.

Latency can also be significantly reduced if gamers and gaming companies providing the service both use Syntropy to optimize their networks.

With Syntropy’s fully-decentralized routing protocol, DARP, we can automatically find the fastest and most reliable paths for data to travel, maximizing the performance of any Internet connection.

This brings gamers new levels of reliability and speed and allows content companies to reduce their network costs drastically.

Wrapping up

Syntropy Stack has many tools for setting your network up with optimized bandwidth while monitoring and managing your endpoints and their crucial connections.

We’ve broken down the basic steps for getting started with the platform here, but if you’re interested in learning more or have specific questions, check out our Documentation.

Our team will support you on the Discord channel if you have any further questions.