{
  "slug": "bandwidth-delay-product",
  "term": "Bandwidth-delay product",
  "aliases": [
    "BDP"
  ],
  "definition": "The bandwidth-delay product is a data quantity obtained by multiplying a specified transfer rate by a specified delay.",
  "note": "TCP interpretation: RFC 6349 uses bottleneck bandwidth times round-trip time (RTT) to estimate the data needed in flight to fill a path; divide bit/s times seconds by eight for bytes. Use baseline RTT without congestion-induced queueing for this budget, and state the rate boundary and direction [tcp-bdp].\n\nWorked example: An illustrative 10 Gbit/s bottleneck and 20 ms RTT give 25,000,000 bytes, not 25 MiB. This is dimensional arithmetic, not an observed rate or a recommended buffer setting. The rate must count the same data bytes as the window; overhead, endpoints and storage work can lower achieved throughput [tcp-bdp].",
  "status": "shipping",
  "advantages": [],
  "limitations": [
    {
      "text": "A pipeline budget is not measured goodput, storage queue depth or a guarantee that a connection can fill the path.",
      "citationIds": [
        "tcp-bdp"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "related": [
    "tcp-receive-window",
    "tcp-congestion-window",
    "throughput-storage",
    "queue-depth",
    "nvme-tcp"
  ],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "tcp-bdp",
      "title": "RFC 6349: Framework for TCP Throughput Testing, sections 3.2 and 3.3.1 (Informational)",
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6349.html#section-3.3.1",
      "accessed": "2026-11-11"
    }
  ],
  "provenance": [
    "Source review, not a measured network or storage result. TCP window budgets describe one sending direction of one connection."
  ],
  "updated": "2026-11-11"
}