PerformanceWiki [the blog]

Performance Definition: throughput

Saw this definition from one of the Oracle OpenWorld sessions, thought it was pretty clear and concise:
Throughput

• The measure of the transfer of bits across the media over a given period of time. Commonly used in discussing data transfer rates
• Due to a number of factors, throughput usually does not match the specified bandwidth. Factors include:

• The amount and type of traffic on the network
• The number of network devices encountered in the network path being measured (path latency).

In any network (including FC networks), throughput cannot be faster than the slowest link of the path from source to destination. Even if all or most of the segments have high bandwidth, it will only take one segment in the path with low throughput to create a bottleneck to the throughput of the entire network. Bandwidth is the amount of information it is physically possible to send through the media of choice.