In plain English
When too much information tries to move through a network at the same time, the network cannot carry it all at its normal pace. The traffic is heavier than the network's available capacity, so transmissions are delayed and the service becomes slower.
In context
Here, it means the slowdown is being classified as the result of traffic demand exceeding what the network can handle at that time.
- Situation
- Responding to outages, degraded service, diagnostics, support tickets, and restoration updates
- What it communicates
- classifies the slowdown as being caused by high demand on the network.
Meaning limits
The term alone does not show exactly where the capacity limit is being reached or how long the condition will continue.
Examples
“At lunchtime, network congestion delayed file transfers as hundreds of people sent photos at once.”
“The evening slowdown was traced to network congestion when everyone started streaming the match.”