What three things affect the time it takes for data to arrive at it's destination?
1. The volume of data is inversely proportional to the amount of
time it takes to transmit/receive the data, i.e. the larger the
quantity of data, the longer it takes.
2. The speed of data transmission or bandwidth is also inversely
proportional to the amount of time it takes to transmit/receive the
data, i.e. the greater the speed or the fatter the pipe, the faster
the data transmission.
3. Network latency and protocol overhead are other factors that
affect transmission throughput.
There is an excellent article on Network Latency at
http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html.