A computer system can experience many different latencies, such as disk latency, fiber-optic latency, and operational latency. The following are important types of latency.
Disk latency
Disk latency measures the time that a computing device takes to read and store data. It is the reason there might be storage delays in writing a large number of files instead of a single large file. For example, hard drives have greater disk latency than solid state drives.
Fiber-optic latency
Fiber-optic latency is the time light takes to travel a particular distance through a fiber optic cable. At the speed of light, a latency of 3.33 microseconds occurs for every kilometer that the light travels through space. However, in fiber-optic cable, each kilometer causes a latency of 4.9 microseconds. Network speed can decrease with each bend or imperfection in the cable.
Operational latency
Operational latency is the time lag due to computing operations. It is one of the factors that cause server latency. When operations run one after another in a sequence, you can calculate operational latency as the sum total of the time each individual operation takes. In parallel workflows, the slowest operation determines the operational latency time.