Why ‘Real-Time’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Understand why real-time is available and not a guarantee
• Discover from where the most delays come from 
• Learn why stale data sometimes is a good choice

I have seen people often misunderstand a very popular feature called real-time. People think that it’s like a game live stream, and they’ll be able to see the whole thing like a live stream on TV, but the reality is far different from that. 

Although you’ll indeed get the current updates, it will not be like a live feed. For example, you order a pizza, track the delivery guy, stare at the icon; it might not move for minutes, and then suddenly show up on some other street. 

If you try to find such apps that promise to give you actual real-time updates, you will struggle to do it because most apps claim to do it but end up giving a rapid-fire series of still photos. This gives the user current updates, but not a live update feel. 

Let’s dive into the article and learn more about the real-time feature and what it actually means in tech and real-world scenarios. 

Real-Time Is a Label, Not a Guarantee.

So now you are aware that ‘real-time’ feels a bit off in practice, and you might be wondering why that term even stands out in the first place when what you’re seeing isn’t really perfectly current.

Latency is the time it takes a data packet to travel between two points on a network; it’s measured in milliseconds. – Federal Communications Commission

The thing is, in the world of apps and websites, real-time isn’t so very much a technical guarantee. It’s somewhat of a vibe. Like when you go purchase a box of cereal and the carton says ‘all-natural.’ You’re not actually expecting 100% natural cereals, right? 

That’s how it is with real-time, too. Designers and product employees use it to say something like, ‘Hey, this app is quick and updates a lot, so you won’t be wasting time staring at a stale screen.’ 

Because actually, there are 2 versions of real-time. 

And that may sound like it makes no sense, but here’s how it is: there’s what you believe, and there’s the system’s real-time. When something updates so speedily that you didn’t even notice the wait, your brain takes that as ‘live.’ The system’s real-time is different; it’s a nerdy war of server calls and data pipelines. The app’s first objective is to satisfy your perception. 

All the speed you get to experience (see) from that ‘smooth’ animation doesn’t come from the animation at all. That count on your screen would have to travel from a sensor (or a database) via many digital checkpoints before it’s displayed on your screen.

So while the entire interface may feel ‘snappy,’ that’s basically the final messenger.

Where Delay Comes From

‘Real-time’ is a fuzzy idea in tech-enabled lifestyle habits, isn’t it? But if that’s the scenario, where does the lag come from? 

Let’s have a look. 

Data Has to Travel Before It Can Be Shown

Data can’t simply teleport onto your screen; it is required to travel to it.

The avg. round-trip latency in U.S. fixed broadband ranges from ~14ms to ~75ms; this depends on technology and provider. – ’Measuring Broadband America‘, A Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S.

First, it needs to be formed at a source. This could be a stock exchange trade, a GPS satellite signal, a text message from another person’s smartphone, and so on. Once data exists, it has to be packed up and sent to a server for processing. 

Then it gets inspected and prepared, and from there, it moves through an API (consider it to be a digital doorway) to your app. 

Once it is transferred to your app, it can finally be unpacked and highlighted on the screen. 

There are quite a few hops here, and each one of them, even on the biggest networks, has taken a few milliseconds. And those milliseconds can very quickly become seconds, which you can see when you’re waiting for that car icon to update on the map. 

After all, the internet isn’t magic, no matter how fast it is. 

Refresh Cycles

Most apps weren’t originally intended to have a live wire that pumps data 24/7. 

What developers do here is they transform it so the app has scheduled alerts for updates (e.g., every 30 seconds). This is commonly referred to as ‘polling.’ If you want to go a step further, you can even set up push notifications to send data the exact moment the updates are complete. With that being said, even those can have buffers.

So, why is the schedule even necessary? Simple—without it, the system would collapse. 

Pause and think about it – there are ten million people downloading one app; all of these apps are actively searching for updates every millisecond. 

This is why developers usually opt to update regularly enough that it feels like it’s instant, even though it’s not. 

Here’s a quick example of the issue:

Picture a developer weather data platform. The temperature that you get to see on your mobile isn’t some live feed that’s copied from a thermometer somewhere. No. The data you see is valuable information that’s delivered in timed batches. This has to do with the fact that the weather (often) doesn’t shift that fast.

If it were a situation where you’d require regular, super-accurate updates, then you would probably need to get a more powerful API. Or you might need to shorten the intervals to milliseconds instead of a dozen seconds, or another similar approach.

Caching Makes Apps Feel Fast But Less Current

You know when you start an app, and the information pops up right away? 

You have caching to thank for that. Your app stores a recent snapshot of data in its short-term memory; it would have to go all the way back to the server just every single time. This is the reason your social media page loads so fast when you reopen it. What you’re viewing is, in fact, a slightly old saved copy. 

There’s a trade-off here, no doubt, and it’s currency. That cached ‘real-time’ score or headline could be a few minutes old by the time you stumble upon it, but without caching, every single action would feel slow and clunky. So developers trade a bit of freshness for a more natural feel, and there’s no reason why anyone would want that to be the other way around.

Why Stale Data Is Sometimes a Good Choice

When you hear ‘stale data’ being brought up, you think it’s something bad, but it doesn’t have to be. Stale generally means it’s just a few seconds old, not fake or wrong, which is perfectly okay (for most things). 

Tolerance is critical here. So even a weather forecast from 15 minutes ago may still be useful, and if you were to set up for instant updates, it would be overkill, and constant updates can actually slow down the work. There’s definitely no need for it. In fact, little delays make apps more stable. Those little breaks smooth out the noise and, more significantly, they protect systems from collapsing under traffic. 

It also preserves your phone’s battery. 

You’d think the most beneficial choice would be to chase actual ‘real-time’ in apps, but that performs only on paper. In practice? Not so much.

Conclusion

With all the recent improvements in tech and programming, you’d think that we’ve gone past all of this, but when it comes to updates, you still have to decide between what’s good and what’s literally instantaneous. And those with enough common sense will go for the first option because that’s the single thing that makes sense. 

Tech isn’t magic, and it’s still limited. But the thing is that we hardly even think about those limitations, which is proof of how advanced it truly is.

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