The latest articles on DEV Community by chromulate_mastan (@chromulate_mastan). https://dev.to/chromulate_mastan https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4166725%2F9d70fa16-4077-4e8a-8405-774b3196a431.png https://dev.to/chromulate_mastan en chromulate_mastan Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:43:33 +0000 https://dev.to/chromulate_mastan/5-basic-terms-network-engineers-most-likely-know-part-1-1gmk https://dev.to/chromulate_mastan/5-basic-terms-network-engineers-most-likely-know-part-1-1gmk <p>For anyone wondering what this is, this is nothing more than me, a intermediate programmer, posting my answer to what all these terms are.</p> <p>Everyday I'll post my interpretation of these network engineering terms, and if anyone has any corrections for it, please post it in the comments below.</p> <h2> 1. latency </h2> <p>this is how long it takes for a packet to travel from the source to its destination</p> <p>The lower this is, the less time it takes for a packet to be sent through a network </p> <p>An example: a HTTPS packet from a client takes a short amount of time to travel to the server, meaning that the latency is low</p> <h2> 2. bandwidth </h2> <p>this is the amount of data that can be transported over a certain network in a given amount of time, like bytes per minute for example.</p> <p>this is usually measured in bits per second, so dont expect anything like bytes per minute, as that was just an example in the above sentence.</p> <h2> 3. throughput </h2> <p>this is the amount of data thats successfully transported over a network without any data loss</p> <p>good throughput usually means that data, like a packet, has been moved successfully without any data loss to its reciever, like a browser successfully sending data over to a server like <a href="https://dev.to">https://dev.to</a></p> <h2> 4. Protocol </h2> <p>this is what decides how data is transported, and also other things like whats transported and other aspects of data transport.</p> <p>Like the laws of how communication in a network should work </p> <p>Example:<br> a TCP connection established between two computers, or a simple UDP connection just sending data without any form of connection establishment </p> <h2> 5. Port </h2> <p>This is a program that takes the data from a message from a sender, and then will deal with that recieved data from there</p> <p>Example:</p> <p>say you were, in your browser, to type in the link <a href="https://dev.to:443">https://dev.to:443</a></p> <p>from there the program running on the computer that the IP address "dev.to" points to, is the program that the port points to, and that program recieves the data and deals with it from there.</p> <p>Example: <br> if you were to type into the browser <a href="https://dev.to:80">https://dev.to:80</a>, that would mean that at the 80th port, which is a program, would recieve the data from the sender, which is the browser, and then handle the data from there.</p> beginners learning networking