Which metric best captures the rate of successful completion of tasks over time?

• A. Throughput
• B. Bandwidth
• C. Latency
• D. Utilization

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is measuring how much work actually gets finished over a period of time. Throughput captures that straightly: it’s the number of tasks completed per unit time. It reflects the rate at which the system produces successful results, so if a server handles 500 completed requests per second, that’s its throughput.

Bandwidth, on the other hand, is about data transfer volume per time, not the count of completed tasks. Latency measures how long a single task takes to finish, not how many finish per time unit. Utilization describes how busy the resources are, not the rate of completed work.

So throughput best matches the concept of rate of successful task completions over time. For example, finishing 1,000 completed tasks per minute directly shows how quickly work is being completed.