Protocol overhead refers to metadata and network routing information sent by an application, which uses a portion of the available bandwidth of a communications protocol. This extra data, making up the protocol headers and application-specific information is referred to as overhead, since it does not contribute to the content of the message.
Protocol overhead can be expressed as a percentage of non-application bytes (protocol and frame synchronization) divided by the total number of bytes in the message.
Famous quotes containing the word overhead:
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)