How does bandwidth work?

Question

Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don't know much (anything) about computers or dowloading etc.

Recently my internet provider has "cut" my bandwidth back, and i'm wondering how this will affect my internet surfing. Will I use alot of 'bandwidth' by streaming videos online, or even checking my email?

I'll accept simple answers too, I just want to know what bandwidth really is and how it will affect my internet usage.

Thanks

Answer 1

Bandwidth is a term that has sort of mutated over the years, and is often used partially incorrectly. Bandwidth is the maximum throughput of a particular connection, and is effectively synonymous with your download speed. If your bandwidth has been throttled back, it means that your maximum throughput has decreased, which translates to slower downloads for you.



You will probably not notice a difference during simple tasks, such as checking your e-mail or browsing websites that do not have a lot of multimedia content. But during activities such as streaming videos or downloading very large files, you will probably notice that it takes you longer to accomplish the same tasks.

Answer 2

Picture bandwidth like a garden hose. The bigger the hose, the more gets through. It really is that simple. If you have broadband, which it sounds like you do, a bandwidth cut will probably not affect web surfing / email too much. These are low bandwidth applications.



However, streaming video, audio, downloading, etc... These are typically high bandwidth applications and will likely have an effect.

Answer 3

Don't listen to Dusy (s)he's an idiot. Bandwith is how much 'transfer' allowance you have. So say surfing the web, writing emails etc etc would use litle bandwith cause they are just small text files (on the whole) playing games (such as WOW, CSS or L2) or streaming videos uses quite alot of bandwith.



I have unlimited bandwith means I can use the internet to my hearts content. Unless you run a server, stream videos all day long or download lots and lots, you could easily cope with 1GB bandwith. For a family household i'd say about 5gb, if you download music alot and fb alot (for 4+ people)

Answer 4

In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, digital bandwidth, or network bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it (kbit/s, Mbit/s etc).



Bandwidth may refer to bandwidth capacity or available bandwidth in bit/s, which typically means the net bit rate, channel capacity or the maximum throughput of a logical or physical communication path in a digital communication system. For example, bandwidth test implies measuring the maximum throughput of a computer network. The reason for this usage is that according to Hartley's law, the maximum data rate of a physical communication link is proportional to its bandwidth in hertz, which is sometimes called frequency bandwidth, radio bandwidth or analog bandwidth, the last especially in computer networking literature.



The word bandwidth may also refer to consumed bandwidth, corresponding to achieved throughput or goodput, i.e., the average data rate of successful data transfer through a communication path. This sense applies to expressions such as bandwidth shaping, bandwidth management, bandwidth throttling, bandwidth cap, bandwidth allocation (for example bandwidth allocation protocol and dynamic bandwidth allocation), etc. An explanation to this usage is that digital bandwidth of a bit stream is proportional to the average consumed signal bandwidth in Hertz (the average spectral bandwidth of the analog signal representing the bit stream) during a studied time interval.



Digital bandwidth may also refer to: average bitrate (ABR) after multimedia data compression (source coding), defined as the total amount of data divided by the playback time.



Some authors prefer less ambiguous terms such as gross bit rate, net bit rate, channel capacity and throughput, to avoid confusion between digital bandwidth in bits per second and analog bandwidth in hertz.

Answer 5

your bandwidth is basically your speed, the lower the bandwidth, the lower the speed