What is network BandWidth in simple words?

Bandwidth is a common technology term that almost all of us come across a number of times. But do you know what this term actually means? What are its applications? And so on. If not, then you will find a lot of details regarding the same, just stay tuned till the end of this simple and short article.

Whenever you connect to the internet to watch videos, stream videos, study, chat, call, and much more, in all this process, you are only sending and receiving data that contains the information you are looking for. For example, if you are live streaming a video, then you are actually receiving that video in the form of data that is being transferred from a remote server to you. This transfer of that data over the internet at particular time intervals is known as Bandwidth. Now, we have understood what bandwidth means in a very simple manner, but, confusion might arise in your mind that if bandwidth is the amount of data transferred over the internet, then are speed and bandwidth both the same? The answer is no, both are different.

Let us try to understand this by a simple example, suppose you travel from your house to your office by your car and cover a certain distance in doing so. Therefore, the quantity of distance you cover in a particular time until you reach from your home to office is Bandwidth and how quickly you reach from your home to office by covering a specific distance at regular time intervals is the speed of the Internet here. In more layman terms, how much data is transferring per second… So, I hope you might have clearly understood the difference as of now.

There are some more terms with which Bandwidth is often mistaken, and they are Latency and Throughput. Let us understand the difference here also in a very simple and easy manner. In the technical term, Latency means the extreme time taken or delay in time while receiving the data, it is also called ping rate. Let us try to make it more simple. Suppose, you are live streaming a football match, then the quantity of data received by you per second is the bandwidth and the time it takes for that data to reach you from the server is that Latency.

Throughput is another term that most people often mistake for bandwidth. Let us try to understand this by a simple example. Suppose, you are watching live streaming of a concert, then, all the data that the remote server is transmitting per second to you is bandwidth, but in reality, there is data loss due to several factors, and the actual data that makes it to you is called throughput, taking a lot of factors, like – time, latency, internet speed, data loss, and much more into account.

Now, a question might arise in your mind: how much bandwidth do I need? And does everyone require the same amount of bandwidth? Well, the answer is no, it varies from person to person depending on their needs. If you happen to be using one or two devices and your work ranges from low to moderate, then you need less bandwidth. But if your work requires heavy usage, or if you have multiple devices connected in your home or o\small office, or if you happen to have many family members or colleagues, then you need more bandwidth. For example – if you are a heavy gamer, programmer, tech geek, and so on, then also you will require more bandwidth to work smoothly and hassle-free.

As of now, we have got a lot of knowledge regarding bandwidth, now, you might be thinking that can we increase the bandwidth, the answer is yes, you can increase your bandwidth, and it is quite simple, below are the three ways to do so:

• You should upgrade your existing Internet plan depending upon your needs and work. You can browse through a lot of plans available by your Internet provider and then choose the one which best suits your needs.
• You can upgrade your existing router to a dual or a tri-band router to get a greater bandwidth.
• You should try to connect your devices, like – laptop or computer directly to the router using physical wires, rather than connecting via Wi-Fi. This prevents a lot of data loss and your Throughput increases, and in turn, your bandwidth also increases.

 

FAQs

What is meant by Bandwidth?

In simple words, bandwidth is nothing but the quantity of data that the remote server sends to your computer. This data can be anything, a movie, a live stream video, a call, and much more.

What is the use of bandwidth?

A bandwidth has no direct use, but it is responsible for the speed of the internet, the more the bandwidth, the more is the speed of the internet.

How can I increase my bandwidth?

After going through this article, you must have an answer to this question.