| n. | 1. | The state or quality of being latent. |
| 2. | The time between a stimulus the appearance of the response; the time between any causal action and the first appearance of the effect. Called also | |
| 3. | (Med.) The time between exposure to a carcinogen or other disease-causing agent and the appearance of the consequent disease. |
| Noun | 1. | latency - (computer science) the time it takes for a specific block of data on a data track to rotate around to the read/write head Synonyms: rotational latency |
| 2. | latency - the time that elapses between a stimulus and the response to it | |
| 3. | latency - the state of being not yet evident or active |
| (communications) | latency - 1. The time it takes for a packet to cross
a network connection, from sender to receiver. 2. The period of time that a frame is held by a network device before it is forwarded. Two of the most important parameters of a communications channel are its latency, which should be low, and its bandwidth, which should be high. Latency is particularly important for a synchronous protocol where each packet must be acknowledged before the next can be transmitted. |