What Is BandWidth And Its Caution...

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Basic information about Bandwidth...

Bandwidth statistic

In computer networking and computer science, the words bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth are terms that used to refer to various bit-rate measures, representing the available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits per second or multiples of it (bit/s, kbit/s, Mbit/s, Gbit/s, etc.). This may sound too formal for a newbie to understand so, let me put it into a simple term.

Many new web site owners frequently ask the same questions about bandwidth: How does it work? How is it measured? Megabits or megabytes? Bandwidth usage is often a major component of a hosting agreement between the service provider, and you the customer. So it's safe to say obtaining a solid understanding of how bandwidth works is critical to making educated decisions about your web site!

Think of water flowing in a pipe and the possible measurements you could make. You could measure how fast the water is flowing through the pipe: Imagine putting a ping pong ball into the water, and measuring how long it took to get from one end of the pipe to the other. You could also measure how much water has flowed through the pipe, perhaps by directing the out flow into a bucket. Perhaps you also need water to flow back the way it came, so you have a pair of pipes, one with water flowing in each direction.

Sounds simple, right? In fact, the plumbing analogy is so similar to Internet connections that many people call it a pipe! Now let's explain how each of the measurements above now relate to bandwidth. Your service provider always measures bandwidth in terms of bit rate or transfer. In our plumbing analogy bit rate corresponds to the ping pong ball's speed, while transfer corresponds to water in the bucket.

Screenshot of home telephone bandwidth

In its smallest form Internet communication is broken down into bits, which are tiny on/off electrical signals (think of a bit as a drop of water). When your service provider measures a connection by bit rate they are monitoring how many drops of water flow through the pipe at one time, usually per second. As you might've guessed, there are lots of bits to measure even in one second so the measurement is usually scaled in tens of thousands (megabits) or hundreds of thousands (gigabits) per second.

Now, when measuring transfer (the bucket) your service provider will instead use "bytes". If a bit is a drop of water, a byte is about a teaspoon's worth. To be precise there are exactly eight bits in one byte. However even with this 8:1 ratio, there are still quite a few bytes to measure so it is scaled up to tens of thousands (megabytes) and hundreds of thousands (gigabytes) as well. Transfer is measured by how many bytes fit into your bucket. Note the difference! One measurement is the speed of sending information, while the other measures how much you've sent. If your water was flowing fast enough, you could possibly fill up your bucket in one day! However, if your pipe is too small and your water flows too slowly, you may not be able to provide enough water to all those demanding it (your web site's visitors).

Finally, some providers may combine "in and out" speed or transfer into one number, or instead measure them independently. The "in and out" bandwidth is identical to two pipes, one flowing in each direction. Your provider may sum the speed or volume of water moving in each direction, or only count one or the other.

Knowing these bandwidth basics can save web site owners money by buying only what they need, not what they think they need!
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