resources
Bandwidth
Bandwidth - The transmission rate of a communication line. It is usually measured in Kilobits per second (Kbps), Megabits per second (Mbps) or for very high-bandwidth (fast) connections, Gigabits per second (Gbps). This describes the amount of data that can be carried per second by the connection.
Data is measured in bits and bytes. A bit is a single binary piece of data (equivalent to a 1 or a 0). One byte equals eight bits. When measuring data, a binary system is used. So a Kilobyte equals : 1024 bytes or 8192 bits of information.
Some connections provide different speeds for "upstream" (traffic travelling from the user - for example file uploads) and "downstream" (traffic flowing to the user - for instance web-page downloads).
The maximum bandwidth available via dial-up connections is generally 56Kbps (but often slower than this in reality). Broadband connections offer significantly higher speeds than this - up to several megabits-per-second.
Internet service providers often "manage" bandwidth to prioritise certain types of network traffic over other types, or to "throttle" bandwidth (restrict the amount of bandwidth available) when a user exceeds the amount of data they are allowed under their service plan.
See also Broadband.
