You might be curious about bandwidth if your internet connection is suddenly slower than it is most days.
For most people, those two activities are by far the biggest bandwidth hoggers.
How Much Bandwidth Do You Have?
Lifewire / Nusha Ashjaee
(& How Much Do You Need?)
How much bandwidth youneeddepends on what you plan on doing with your internet connection.
For the most part, more is better, constrained, of course, by your budget.
WOW! Speed Test.
You won’t be sorry.
Bandwidth Is a Lot Like Plumbing
Plumbing provides a great analogy for bandwidth… seriously!
Data is to available bandwidth as water is to the size of the pipe.
It’s likely that everyone will feel that things are a bit sluggish if not constantly starting and stopping.
This has to do with bandwidth.
Put another way: the bandwidth is a fixed amount based on what you pay for.
Your ISP might use one term, a testing service another, and a video streaming service yet another.
For example, 15 MBs is not the same as 15 Mbs (note thelowercase b).
The first reads as 15 megaBYTES while the second is 15 megaBITS.
These two values are different by a factor of 8 since there are 8 bits in a byte.
This same concept applies to any data unit you might encounter.
SeeTerabytes, Gigabytes, & Petabytes: How Big are They?for more information.
This intentional bandwidth limitation is often calledbandwidth control.
As an example, say you want to download a really large 10 GB file.
Something similar to bandwidth control isbandwidth throttling.
internet performance is determined by more than just how much bandwidth you have available.
FAQ
There are several ways tomonitor internet traffic.
For instance, it’s possible for you to use your router or a third-party system.
YourISPwebsite might provide bandwidth monitoring as well.
