What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can travel a communications path in a given time. Bandwidth is typically measured in bits per second. If you think of the communications path as a pipe, then bandwidth represents the width of the pipe that determines how much data can flow through it all at once.
Bandwidth is the total amount of information that has been uploaded and downloaded from your website. This includes all traffic to your website (people viewing your website and downloading any files), all email to and from your email accounts and all data you have uploaded and downloaded to/from your website. All packages have a monthly bandwidth limit and the bandwidth is reset to zero on the first of every month.
Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. In digital systems, bandwidth is data speed in bits per second (BPS.) Thus, a modem that works at 57,600 BPS has twice the bandwidth of a modem that works at 28,800 BPS. Speed Edge will track your bandwidth usage as a means of measuring your site’s activity, and charge accordingly.
Essentially, bandwidth is the size and speed of the “pipe” that connects your computer to a network and the Internet. This “pipe” transports data back and forth between your computer and the Internet. You use bandwidth to view web pages and send data out from your computer (upload) or receive data into your computer (download). There are limitations to how much data can be exchanged depending on how much bandwidth is purchased. MODEMs have a much smaller bandwidth than Ethernet connections do. The residence hall traffic is combined with the rest of the university and together they are connected to the Internet. The residence halls use 10 Based-T ( 10mb ) Ethernet connections to communicate over the network and with the Internet. You can send a large picture over the network in seconds. At home you probably use a MODEM, which communicates over a phone line and uses a very small pipe to the Internet. The same picture using a MODEM could take several minutes.
