Goodput

Example: "Network congestion may cause the goodput to decrease relative to the throughput."

Goodput sounds like a golf term that describes sinking a 20 foot birdie putt. However, in the computer world, goodput is related to throughput, which measures the average data transfer speed over a communications protocol.

Throughput is calculated by dividing the amount of data transferred over the time it takes to transfer the data. This includes packet headers, acknowledgements that packets have been received, and retransmitted data. Goodput is calculated by dividing the original data divided by the transfer time.

For example, a 5 megabyte file may require 300 kilobytes of header information and acknowledgements to be sent during the data transfer process. Therefore, the throughput would be roughly 5.3 megabytes divided by the transfer time. The goodput would be the original 5 megabytes divided by the transfer time. Therefore, goodput is always less than or equal to the throughput measurement.

Published: July 13, 2010