In networking, the instantaneous throughput is the instantaneous bit rate at which an end device receives data from the source over the network. The average throughput is the average bit rate at which the data is transmitted (total number of bits in file / total time taken to transmit).
The maximum throughput of a route through a network is determined by the minimum bandwidth of the links (the rate of the bottleneck link) between the source host and the destination host (if processing delays are negligible).