The air we snuffle is unseen, untouched, yet it is one of the most integral things in our life, something that which we cannot live without. Likewise, the internet and World Wide Web too needs a kind of air to work, that air is called bandwidth. Without bandwidth, the internet is considered dead!
Think of bandwidth as water pipes or water channels. The bigger the pipe the faster things will happen. Bandwidth and speed is the same thing, measured in bits per second.
GRAPHIC BANDWIDTH
As for graphics, well that’s something totally different. The above refers to network data and is often used as a substitute for data transfer rate, but bandwidth could be used in reference to any movement of data – including that between the graphics card and the CPU. So I suppose bandwidth affects graphics because it allows for video cards which process graphics faster, due to better communication with the CPU.
COMMUNCATION
Internet bandwidth is usually expressed in bits (of data) per second (bps). A modem that works at 57,600 bps has twice the bandwidth of a modem that works at 28,800 bps. In general, a connection or link with a high bandwidth is one that may be able to carry enough information to sustain the succession of images in a video presentation, for example, viewing videos on you-tube smoothly.
In electronic communication, bandwidth is expressed in terms of the difference between the highest-frequency signal component and the lowest-frequency signal component. For example a radio will use less bandwidth then a television.
A real communications path usually consists of a succession of links, each with its own bandwidth. If one of these is much slower than the rest, it is said to be a bandwidth bottleneck.
Kbps or Mbps
Kbps stands for “kilobits per second,” while Mbps stands for “megabits per second.” Because one megabit is equal to 1024 kilobits, 1.0 Mbps is over 1000 times faster than 1.0 Kbps.
Note that the lowercase “b” in Kbps and Mbps means “bit,” not byte. One byte is equal to eight bits. For example, 2 MBps equals 16 Mbps. This is a small but important difference to be aware of. Data transfer rates are typically measured in bits, while data storage capacity is usually measured in bytes.
The difference between Hz (Herz) and bps (bits per second) is; Hz applies to a clock frequency that is used to modulate the electrical signal on the wire (assuming copper). The higher the rate of modulation (Hz), the more information can be transmitted per second.
So how do you determine how much bandwidth you will need? The process begins with asking the right questions-what applications are they running, and what is the performance service these applications needs? What you really need to know is what the users (including yourself) would be doing on the network. It’s possible that 200 users will cause less of a bottleneck than a group of three users that really beat the heck out of the network.
The challenge of calculating required bandwidth is as old as the science of networking itself. From the earliest days of telephony, designers were faced with the task of predicting user-base growth and demand, and making the tough economic choices to build their networks appropriately while remaining fiscally conservative.
Despite the tremendous advance of technology and integration of more social networks, music videos sits, internet calling options, etc., these challenges remain with us today. Consider a few of the most common factors influencing the need for increased bandwidth:
Network designers are faced not only with a varying number of users on their networks but also by applications and services that require ever-more bandwidth.
Data file sizes continue to grow. For example, current digital cameras can easily generate files exceeding 16 mega pixels per photo. Do the users know how to convert those images into Web-ready files of smaller size before they send them? I don’t think so.
Voice over Inter Protocol (VoIP) places an additional load on infrastructures that may originally have been designed only for data.
As they continue to be deployed, video conferencing (Skype, ooVoo, etc.) and surveillance applications (viewing your security cameras online) will add their share of data to the network burden.
The increased network load at the beginning and end of the workday (when there are multiple email users at one time) will often be three to four times higher than during non-peak periods. Although email is not a streaming, time-sensitive form of communication, user expectations remain high when it comes to network performance.
BEST PRACTICES
So, given all of these factors, what constitutes a best practice when estimating current and future bandwidth needs? Define what applications are in use today, and by which user groups. Having done so, assess how much bandwidth each application requires, and for what periods and off course know your budget.
If your Internet connection seems slow, the first step is to benchmark it using an Internet speed test. An Internet speed test can give you a fairly accurate indication of how much bandwidth is available to you at the current time. One example is www.speedtest.com, it works great and free too!
The recommendation above is, of course, only a guideline – there is no method for achieving a perfect, irrefutable figure for scaling bandwidth. In the end, the network engineer must rely on available metrics, common sense, and the ability to achieve a balance between cost and performance — and must set the expectations of end users within these limits. Such planning remains as much art as science. What matters most is having access to bandwidth-without that there is no internet, now can you imagine life without internet?
Written By Praem Rambharak
