Source: https://gameye.com/glossary/data-packet/

---
title: "Data packet | Gameye"
description: "A data packet is game data — position, inputs, events — sent across the network. Packet size and send rate directly affect latency and bandwidth use."
---

# Data packet

A data packet can either be a chunk of your game, some code, a specific file, or any random data you want to send to someone. So for your game, this’ll be the data of your game’s sessions (for example, a player’s position, what actions they take, etc).

## Data packets help send your game’s sessions across the internet

It’s mainly due to bandwidth. Those copper wires and fibre optics only have so much room to carry your files. The bigger and better the bandwidth, the more data packets you can send. Having low latency helps, as this means those packets can travel faster, too.

## Each packet is wrapped with metadata

All of that data lumped together is wrapped in meta data – instructions for how the data should be handled and put back together on the other side.

Building a multiplayer game? Gameye hosts dedicated game servers: ship your server as a Docker container and start one per match with a single API call, in a region near your players.

[See how it works →](https://gameye.com/how-it-works/)

[Back to Glossary](https://gameye.com/glossary/)

## Related terms

- ### Latency

Latency is how fast data is moving. How quickly does it get from point A to point B? (And it’s generally measured in milliseconds.) [Read more](https://gameye.com/glossary/latency/)
- ### Data center

A data center is a facility that houses servers used to store, process, and manage large volumes of data for applications and games. [Read more](https://gameye.com/glossary/data-center/)