Where does latency in WebRTC video streaming come from? An analysis

[chfritz]

We analyzed the glass-to-glass latency of streaming video from robots to the web using WebRTC. Typical, total latency for remote streaming is 150-180 ms but how does this break down?

Tl;dr:

• The vast majority of latency actually comes from the camera itself and the USB bus (~100 ms).
• H264 encoding and decoding add around 10 ms each (or less).
• WebRTC only adds around 10 ms of latency for remote streaming (jitter buffers).
• The rest is due to static network delay (“ping timing”, speed of light).

Read the full analysis here:

WebRTC Latency: A Breakdown | Transitive Robotics