Build fluency with the core terms every IT professional needs to discuss and interpret benchmark results.
Core benchmark terms
Throughput: how much work per unit time (RPS, TPS, MB/s)
Latency: time to complete one operation (p50 = median, p99 = worst 1%)
Baseline: the reference measurement you compare against
Regression: a measurable worsening compared to a previous baseline
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A load test report shows: "p99 latency: 1,240 ms." What does this mean?
p99 (99th percentile) means 99% of requests completed within that time — only the slowest 1% took longer. It is the most common SLO threshold because it captures the worst user experiences without being skewed by extreme outliers.
2 / 5
After a deployment, an engineer notes: "We have a latency _____ — p95 went from 45 ms to 180 ms." What is the correct term?
Regression specifically means a measurable worsening compared to a previous baseline — often caused by a code or configuration change. "Degradation" implies gradual worsening over time. "Spike" is temporary. "Anomaly" is a general term without directional implication.
3 / 5
A capacity report says: "Peak _____ is 8,500 RPS — above that the system starts dropping requests." What metric is being described?
Throughput is the rate of successful work completed — here, requests per second (RPS). IOPS applies to storage I/O. Latency measures time-to-complete. Jitter measures variability in latency.
4 / 5
An SRE says: "The _____ was 30 ms but we saw variance up to 180 ms — that jitter is causing problems for real-time systems." What word fills the blank?
p50 (median latency) is technically the most accurate here — it represents the midpoint of the distribution. "Average" is also common but can be skewed by outliers. "Baseline" refers to a reference measurement, not a statistical percentile. In the sentence, p50 contrasts with the high variance ("jitter").
5 / 5
An engineer says: "The _____ shows we should provision for 2× peak traffic to stay within SLO." What word fills the blank?
Benchmark here refers to the reference performance measurement used to inform capacity decisions. A benchmark establishes what the system can handle under known conditions, enabling engineers to calculate safe headroom (here: 2× peak).