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Bandwidth

Bandwidth

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42 views

Bandwidth

Bandwidth

Uploaded by

belete
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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 What is network bandwidth?

Network bandwidth is a measurement indicating the maximum capacity of a wired or


wireless communications link to transmit data over a network connection in a given
amount of time. Typically, bandwidth is represented in the number of bits, kilobits, megabits or
gigabits that can be transmitted in 1 second. Synonymous with capacity, bandwidth describes
data transfer rate. Bandwidth is not a measure of network speed -- a common misconception.

How does bandwidth work?

The more bandwidth a data connection has, the more data it can send and receive at one time. In
concept, bandwidth can be compared to the volume of water that can flow through a pipe.
The wider the pipe's diameter, the more water can flow through it at one time. Bandwidth
works on the same principle. The higher the capacity of the communication link, the more
data can flow through it per second.

The cost of a network connection goes up as bandwidth increases. Thus, a 1 gigabit per second
(Gbps) Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) link will be more expensive than one that can handle
250 megabits per second (Mbps) of throughput.

Bandwidth vs. speed

The terms bandwidth and speed are often used interchangeably but not correctly. The cause of
the confusion may be due, in part, to advertisements by internet service providers (ISPs) that
conflate the two by referring to greater speeds when they truly mean bandwidth.

Essentially, speed refers to the rate at which data can be transmitted, while the definition of
bandwidth is the capacity for that speed. To use the water metaphor again, speed refers to how
quickly water can be pushed through a pipe; bandwidth refers to the quantity of water that can be
moved through the pipe over a set time frame.

Why bandwidth is important

Bandwidth is not an unlimited resource. In any given deployment location, such as a home or
business, there is only so much capacity available. Sometimes, this is due to physical limitations
of the network device, such as the router or modem, cabling or wireless frequencies being used.
Other times, bandwidth is intentionally rate-limited by a network administrator or internet or
wide area network (WAN) carrier.

Multiple devices using the same connection must share bandwidth. Some devices, such as TVs
that stream 4K video, are bandwidth hogs. In comparison, a webinar typically uses far less
bandwidth. Although speed and bandwidth are not interchangeable, greater bandwidth is
essential to maintain tolerable speeds on multiple devices. To help illustrate this, here's the
average bandwidth consumed for various services:

How to measure bandwidth


While bandwidth is traditionally expressed in bits per second (bps), modern network links now
have far greater capacity, which is why bandwidth is now more often expressed as Mbps or
Gbps.

Bandwidth connections can be symmetrical, which means the data capacity is the same in both
directions -- upload and download -- or asymmetrical, which means download and upload
capacity are not equal. In asymmetrical connections, upload capacity is typically smaller than
download capacity; this is common in consumer-grade internet broadband connections.
Enterprise-grade WAN and DIA links more commonly have symmetrical bandwidth.

 Throughput vs. bandwidth: What’s the difference?

While we often use the terms interchangeably, it’s important to remember that bandwidth is not
the same as throughput. Remember when the client told you they had plenty of bandwidth? This
was true. They did. What they didn’t have was throughput.

To reiterate: Their bandwidth, defined as the theoretical maximum amount of traffic that a given
link can support, was 100Mbps. This is 100 million bits per second on the wire, the complete
capacity that his network could theoretically handle. However, there were multiple issues on this
network affecting it.

The primary issue was the excessive congestion, which in turn caused the actual amount of
traffic being passed through a link to drop below 1 million bits per second. So, the bandwidth
was 100 million bits per second and the throughput was 1 million bits per second.

One other thing to note: The purpose of network management software and network throughput
testing is to optimize the network on an ongoing basis. And when you’re measuring throughput,
remember what layer of the OSI model you are operating at. There’s overhead and control traffic
introduced at each layer of the OSI model, that unfortunately, you can’t do without! Therefore,
it’s important to optimize your performance on a continuous basis. Let’s look at how to do that.

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