Throughput

Throughput refers to how much data can be transferred from one location to another in a given amount of time. It is used to measure the performance of hard drives and RAM, as well as Internet and network connections.

For example, a hard drive that has a maximum transfer rate of 100 Mbps has twice the throughput of a drive that can only transfer data at 50 Mbps. Similarly, a 54 Mbps wireless connection has roughly 5 times as much throughput as a 11 Mbps connection. However, the actual data transfer speed may be limited by other factors such as the Internet connection speed and other network traffic. Therefore, it is good to remember that the maximum throughput of a device or network may be significantly higher than the actual throughput achieved in everyday use.

Published: 2007