What’s the Difference Between Bandwidth and Latency in Real-Time Communication?

In the digital age, network performance metrics such as bandwidth and latency significantly impact streaming experiences. Bandwidth refers to the maximum capacity of an internet connection to transfer data, while latency pertains to the delay in data transmission over a network. Both factors are crucial for real-time communication applications like video conferencing. Low bandwidth can cause quality issues such as lag, whereas high latency can result in freezing and audio/video mismatch. Although both metrics are important, latency is generally more critical because it directly affects the fluency of real-time communication. Developers can provide better RTC quality by optimizing these network performance metrics simultaneously through appropriate platform selection and configuration settings.