What is the bandwidth of an Internet connection?
Internet bandwidth or network bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in Kilobit, Megabit or even Gigabit) that can be transferred per second over a network link between two computers.
The actual meaning of the term bandwidth is entirely different than the one promoted for computer networks. Bandwidth finds its use in the field of signal processing where it denotes the difference (measured in Hertz) between the lowest and highest frequency in a continuous set of frequencies.
A link in a network is determined by two factors, bandwidth and speed. These are usually the same but not always.
Definition: Speed is bit rate of the circuit while bandwidth is the amount of “speed” available for use.
As an example, a 500 Megabit Ethernet MPLS service which uses a 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection to site would have a bandwidth of 500Mbps and a speed of 1 Gbps.
Speed is commonly determined by the physical signalling of the underlying network.
The most common example is a Link Aggregation where a number of Ethernet connection are bonded into a single interface. The bandwidth is the sum of the total connections but the speed is determined by the physical network connection.
Another common example occurs when provisioning WAN circuits. It is common to use a high speed circuit to connect from the customer site to the carrier network but offer a “sub-rate” speed for actual use.
For example, a network using 10Gbps everywhere including to your sites might only offer 100Mbps or 1Gbpps connection over the network.
The difference between internet speed and bandwidth can be summed in one line: Internet bandwidth is about how much data can be download or uploaded from your computer, while internet speed is how fast can the data be uploaded or downloaded on your computer. Many ISPs allow different bandwidth limits for downloading and uploading. The upload bandwidth is less than the download bandwidth in most cases as most of the activities done by users require downloading of data from the internet.
Interest in technology-related anything. BSc in ICT. Software Engineer.