You are now entering the PC Anatomy portal

Goodput is the measure of the actual, useful information delivered to an application over a network in a given period of time. It represents the true performance experienced by a user by excluding all the "waste" that can consume network bandwidth. Goodput filters out this "undesirable data," providing a clearer picture of application-level performance.

Factors that reduce goodput

Several factors cause goodput to be lower than throughput, revealing network inefficiencies:

Protocol overhead: Data packets include protocol information (headers) needed for addressing and sequencing. This overhead is counted in throughput but not in goodput.

Packet retransmission: If a packet is lost, delayed, or corrupted in transit, it must be sent again. This process consumes bandwidth and increases throughput, but it does not contribute to the delivery of useful data.

Network congestion: When a network is congested, packet loss and delays increase. This leads to more retransmissions, which lowers goodput even while the total throughput might appear high.

Flow control: Mechanisms like TCP slow-start temporarily limit the rate of data flow to manage congestion, which can result in lower goodput during the initial phase of a connection.