What does latency measure in a network?

Latency measures the total time it takes for a packet to travel from one point in a network to another. This time includes the delays incurred during the transmission across different network segments, which can be influenced by various factors such as propagation delay, transmission delay, queuing delay, and processing delay within network devices.

Understanding latency is crucial for assessing network performance because high latency can lead to delays in data transmission, which may affect applications sensitive to timing, such as video conferencing or online gaming. This characteristic distinguishes latency from other network performance metrics, such as bandwidth or throughput, which measure data transfer rates rather than the time taken for individual packets to arrive at their destination.

The other choices refer to different aspects of network performance: processing time pertains to how long it takes devices to handle data, maximum data throughput indicates the highest rate of data transfer possible in the network, and connection establishment time focuses on the duration required to set up a connection between devices. Each of these is important in its own context but does not specifically define latency.