In general terms, throughput is the rate of production or the rate at which something can be processed. When used in the context of communication networks, such as Ethernet or packet radio, throughput or network throughput is the rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel.hannel utilization, channel efficiency and packet drop rate in percentage are less ambiguous terms. The channel efficiency, also known as bandwidth utilization efficiency, is the percentage of the net bitrate (in bit/s) of a digital communication channel that goes to the actually achieved throughput.