Bandwidth Outline
Introduction
As more and more people switch from dial up to higher speeds more bandwidth is reqired. the internet is packed with features that only work with broadband internet users like streaming video and games. More people are becoming more dependant on these services because it is more convenient than the traditional ways.
What is bandwidth?
The definition of bandwidth is the maximum data-carrying capability in devices. This basically means how much data can go across to you computer at a time. The more bandwidth you have the faster you can surf the web and use other services.
Why is bandwdith important?
Having a lot of bandwidth is very important depending on what you would like to do with the internet. For example if your school has an internet connection with a dial up connection for all it's students, surfing the internet would be very productive. All the web pages will take up a long time to load and you wouldn't be able to play streaming video. Now if your school has a very high speed internet connection than you would be able to surf faster and play video. Computers would be able to do things that wouldn't normally be posssible. You see streaming video takes up a lot of bandwidth and it wouldn't be efficient for everyone to stream video. Even if a school had super fast internet if everybody was streaming video it'll slow down the network or cause it to crash.
Bandwidth and Speed
Now that you know what precisly bandwidth is, it is now time to discuss how it is related with speed. You already know that the more bandwidth that you have the faster your internet connection will be. Some speeds will be kind of related but others will be not even be in the same decade.
- Dial up- this type of internet connection has the lowest amount of bandwidth available and the slowest speeds. If you plan on streaming videos online then there is no hope with this type. Dial up doesn't have enough bandwidth to support the speeds of the video. the maximum speed of dial up is a measly 56 kilobits per second. even though 56 kbps is the maximum there is no way to get that due to attenuation. This type od internet is perfect for people that just want to check their email and look at websites slowly. It'll take a long time to try and download anything off the internet.
- Dsl- This type of internet is considerly faster than dial up and has a lot of bandwidth to spare. Streaming video is easy and painless and it uses a different frequency than the phone. This type of internet is more expansive than dial up but it is worth it. You can usually get this internet from your phone company. You do need to set up a modem and phone lines connected in order to use it. Setting up the modem isn't too hard but you might come up with problems if you don't know what you are doing. The speed is usually 128 kbit/s to 1.5 Mbps, but this can be affected if you are more than 1.25 miles from the central office.
- Cable- This type of internet connected using the existing cable line used with your TV. It uses different frequences than the TV signals so they are not interrupted. This type of internet is usually more expansive than the other two. The maximum speed of cable is 8 Mbps and and lowest speed is about 4 Mbps.
- Fiber- This type of internet is the future. It is the fastest internet connection right now and also the most expansive. You first have to have fiber optic cables around your street and running to your house. This type of internet has a maximum speed of 30 Mbps and upload of 5 Mbps. This type of internet is available in limited areas.
Bits vs Bytes
You really do need to know the difference between bits and bytes because you use it all the time. As things become faster and bigger you need to use the correct term so you don't make mistakes. These two terms may sound the same but they are entirely different.
- bits- used to measure speed of your internet connection. The more bits you have the faster your internet connection.
- bytes- used to measure storage of infomation. The more bytes you have the more data you can store
Uplink vs Downlink
These two things are very entirely different. You really can't mix them up or you just sound not smart, which you want. First of all these's a difference between uploading and downloading. Uploading is the transfer of files from your computer to another computer or server. Downloading, however, is exactly the opposite with transfering files from a server to your computer. It's really easy to remember because you know up and down, right. an example of downloading is when you click on a link from a web page and connects you with another server. Just like these are different terms they always have different speeds. Downloading is always faster than uploading, and to get a good internet speed your downloading speed has to be greater than uploading.
Speed vs Storage Units
Although when abbreviated bits and bytes may look the same, they aren't. The good rule of thumb is when and "b" in the abbreviated form is capitalized then they are talking about bytes. This is exactly the opposite when talking about bits, which is lowercase.
| speed: | storage: |
|---|---|
| 1 kilobit(kb)=1024 bits | 1 kilobyte(kB)=1024 bytes |
| 1 megabit(Mb)=1024 kb | 1 megabyte(MB)=1024 kB |
| 1 gigabit(Gb)=1024 Mb | 1 gigabyte(GB)=1024 MB |
| 1 terabit(Tb)=1024 Gb | 1 terabyte(TB)=1024 GB |
| 1 petabit(Pb)=1024 Tb | 1 petabyte(PB)=1024 TB |
| 1 exabit (Eb)=1024 Pb | 1 exabyte (EB)=1024 PB |