Which statement about latency and redundancy is true?

• A. Increasing redundancy always decreases latency
• B. Increasing redundancy has no impact on latency
• C. Increasing redundancy can increase latency due to additional hops
• D. Latency is unaffected by redundancy and hardware changes

Answer: (C)

Latency is the time it takes for data to travel from the sender to the receiver. Redundancy means adding extra hardware or alternate paths to improve reliability. When you introduce more redundancy by inserting additional devices or routes, the data often has to pass through more hops. Each hop adds its own propagation, transmission, and processing delays, and there may be queuing at intermediate devices as traffic competes for resources. So, increasing redundancy can lead to higher overall latency due to those extra steps.

This is why the statement about latency increasing because of additional hops is the best fit. It reflects the practical trade-off: you gain reliability from redundancy, but you may pay with a bit more delay. The other ideas—that redundancy always decreases latency, has no impact, or that latency is unaffected by hardware changes—aren’t generally accurate, because latency is sensitive to how many hops data must traverse and how those hops are managed.