What is Bandwidth?

[ranjithbajpe]

Hi,
WHen we speak about broadband or GPRS connection Bandwidth is more important. But i have a confusion that what actually Band width is meant>
If i use internet to chat using yahoo messenger , and browse for one hour per day, then total how much band width i will use? Is it same as the size of site which we have browsing?
please some one clear this??

[QwertyManiac]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth

bandwidth is the amount of possible rate tat can be used ...

[expertno.1]

The difference between the highest and lowest frequencies to which a receiver is sensitive.
www.nrao.edu/imagegallery/glossary.shtml

A relative range of frequencies that can carry a signal on a transmission medium.
http://www.adaptivedigital.com/servi...efinitions.htm

The amount of information that can be transmitted over communications lines at one time. The higher the bandwidth, the faster the Web page loads. Limited bandwidth is the main reason for keeping pictures small. Just as it seems we will never have fast enough computers, it feels like we will never have enough bandwidth. The amount of research and development money being thrown at this problem should yield surprising results before long.
www.ojaiwebsites.com/glossary.php

The complete range of frequencies over which a circuit or electronic system is allocated to function. In transmission, the US analog and digital television channel bandwidth is 6 MHz.
www.wgcu.org/watch/hdtv_glossaryofterms.html

The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second, (bps) or bytes per second. For analog devices, the bandwidth is expressed in cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz).
www.magiclanterninsite.com/help/glossary.php

A measure of the capacity of data that can be moved between two points in a given period of time.
www.satech.com/glosofmemter.html

A measure of the capacity of a communications channel. The higher a channel's bandwidth, the more information it can carry.
www.tamu.edu/ode/glossary.html

The carrying capacity or size of a communications channel; usually expressed in hertz (cycles per second) for analog circuits (the original meaning of the term) and in bits per second (bps) for digital circuits (newer meaning). BERT See Bit Error Rate Test Bearer Channel A 64 kbps channel in basic rate and primary rate services of ISDN used for customer message exchange.
www.aware.com/products/dsl/glossary.htm

A very diminishing natural resource... bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data passing through a network at a given time. Things like huge images on web pages and needless questions posted to Usenet newsgroups waste bandwidth which could be better utilized for transferring information.
htmlhelp.com/reference/glossary.html

Bandwidth refers to how fast data flows through the path that it travels to your computer; it's usually measured in kilobits, megabits or gigabits per second.
http://www.broadband.gc.ca/pub/techn...ictionary.html

Measure of the information-carrying capacity of an optical fiber. Note: This term is often used to specify the normalized modal bandwidth (MHz·km) of a multimode fiber. See Dispersion for single-mode fibers.
http://www.corningcablesystems.com/w...ehtml/glossary

[pimpom]

Expert No.1 has brought up a wealth of information (I didn't follow the links), but could be confusing for the OP and other non-tech readers. Let me try to summarise.

As far as the OP's question is concerned, Bandwidth means the amount of data you're allowed to transfer within a given period of time. E.g., the lowest-priced plan by BSNL broadband is 1GB per month, which means that the total of your upload and download must not exceed 1 billion bytes per month. This works out to an average of about 33MB per day.

Depending on the complexity of the web pages you visit, the amount of data involved may be several kilobytes to hundreds of kilobytes per page.

When you click on a link, you also send out some data which is counted in the bandwidth you consume. But this is normally much smaller than the data you download, unless you're uploading a large amount of data to a website.

When you post a message on this forum, you're using up a part of your bandwidth. When you open another page or refresh one, you're also using up bandwidth.

The term 'bandwidth' as used in Internet usage and in electronics have the same root, but have come to diverge a bit. A full explanation will be rather lengthy. Let us know if you need further clarification.

[crashuniverse]

i'd make a try. bandwidth is "rate of data transfer thro' ur net connection". its unit is kbps (kilo bits per second) and many times KBps (kilo bytes per second). 8kbps=1KBps.

now i give u an example, taking KBps as example as its relatively easy to relate things in this case.

suppose u have to download a file of 1 MB (1000 KB) and u have a net connection of 10 KBps, then it takes around 10s. and in case u r runnin on a 1 MBps connection it theoretically takes a second.

[lywyre]

this would also give expertno.1's posting:

http://www.google.com/search?client=...utf-8&oe=utf-8

[cvvikram]

Yup there are lots of defination for bandwidth....better search in Google....or the Wikipedia site is good.

[crashuniverse]

u can find out more on google definitions by this tag

desine:your term
ex. define:bandwidth

it gives away most precise definitions. and works for any terms

[ranjithbajpe]

thanks a lot for all for a nice explanation