The Difference Between Goodput vs Throughput and How to Maximize Your Bandwidth
The Difference Between Goodput vs Throughput and How to Maximize Your Bandwidth
YMP Admin
TL;DR: While bandwidth determines your network’s capacity, throughput measures actual data transfer rates, and goodput tracks only useful data delivery. Understanding these differences is crucial for optimizing network performance. Many companies mistakenly think higher bandwidth automatically means faster file transfers, but throughput and goodput are the real indicators of data delivery speed. TCP limitations can create bottlenecks even with high bandwidth, but solutions like IBM Aspera’s FASP technology can maximize your network’s potential.
Monitoring network performance is crucial for companies, especially when measuring data and monitoring delivery. Many companies think that increasing their bandwidth will help improve data delivery, however higher bandwidth does not mean an increase in file transfer speed. In fact, network throughput and goodput are what measure the actual speed data moves.
The Difference Between Goodput vs Throughput
Throughput measures the rate at which messages and data arrive at their destination. It is used as a measure of the overall performance of a network. The average throughput tells a user how much data is being transferred from the desired source.
Similar to throughput, goodput is the rate at which useful data arrives at a destination. As long as the path between endpoints is uncongested, the throughput rate and goodput rate will be as close as they theoretically can be.
While throughput is the measurement of all data transferring (whether that be useful or not), goodput measures useful data only. Viewing throughput cannot distinguish the nature of data flowing through, but rather only what has gone past. This can include undesirable data like data retransmissions or overhead data like protocol headers.
What Can Affect a Throughput or Goodput Rate?
In the case of TCP, retransmissions occur because TCP data did not make it to its destination on time. This can waste the network bandwidth as the same link retransmits twice or more, also negatively affecting the goodput rate.
This can commonly occur during times of interface congestion. This means that a full interface has maximized its throughput, but likely not its goodput, due to limitations in the TCP protocol. The greater the onslaught of data congesting the interface, the larger the number of retransmission occuring.
Protocol overhead (other data wrapped around application data) is also excluded from goodput, but included in throughput rates.
How to Maximize Your Network Throughput
In order to take full advantage of your company’s available bandwidth to achieve good throughput rates, IBM Aspera fills the gaps left by TCP. Using their patented FASP technology, Aspera helps eliminate bottlenecks caused by TCP- or UDP-based file transfers and speeds up transfers over public and private IP networks.
FASP removes the artificial bottlenecks caused by imperfect congestion control algorithms, packet losses, and the coupling between reliability and congestion control. By eliminating these, it achieves full line speed on even the longest, fastest wide area networks. FASP fills the gap left by TCP for the transport of large, file-based data, making it possible to move massive amounts of digital data anywhere in the world.
Goodput vs Throughput: Key Differences at a Glance
| Metric | Definition & Insight | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Throughput | Measures the total amount of data reaching its destination, including headers, retransmissions, and overhead. | Reflects raw network performance—but may hide inefficiencies. |
| Goodput | Measures only the useful, application-level data received—excluding headers, retransmissions, and error overhead. | Shows effective transfer efficiency and user-relevant speed. |
| Key Differences | Throughput counts everything that arrives; goodput filters to what’s actually useful. | Understanding both helps identify network issues like congestion or retransmissions. |
| Impact of Retransmissions & Overhead | Lost or delayed packets must be resent, adding to throughput but reducing goodput. | High overhead or packet loss pushes uptime costs and throttles delivery of useful data. |
| Optimization Focus | Improving protocols or tools to reduce overhead and retransmissions raises goodput closer to throughput. | Efficient data movement—faster, smarter, less wasteful. |
Learn More About IBM Aspera with PacGenesis
With their award-winning FASP protocol, Aspera software fully utilizes existing infrastructure to deliver the fastest, most predictable file-transfer experience. If you find that your network bandwidth is being completely maximized yet your throughput rate is low, Aspera could be the solution for your business needs.
At PacGenesis, we have earned IBM’s trust to implement their solution as an IBM Gold Business Partner. We want to help you find the right solution for your organization. To ask questions about file transfer software or Aspera, please reach out to our team at (512) 766-8715.
To learn more about PacGenesis, follow @PacGenesis on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn or visit us at pacgenesis.com.
