Don't buy it unless you understand it - understanding bandwidth

It’s simple but profound - don’t buy things that you don’t understand.

In other words, whether it’s stocks or internet service, you should know what you’re getting and work with people that have the heart of a teacher when explaining the product or service

So today, we wanted to clarify one of the technologies that we work with every day but can be confusing- bandwidth.

If you’ve ever said, I don’t have enough bandwidth for that, when talking about your capacity to do a project, you’re on the right track in understanding the concept.

In the tech world, bandwidth is the maximum amount of data transmitted over an internet connection in a given amount of time. If your internet service provider (ISP) assigns you an up to 25 Mbps connection, that 25 Mbps is how fast that data transfers from the ISP to you. (The bigger the number of Mbps, the faster the data travels.)

Think of it like a race car. You can only go as fast as your car is programmed to go. You may want to go 300 miles per hour, but if your car isn’t equipped for that, you won’t be able to.

Bandwidth travels through a physical connection like copper cable, high-speed fiber, or a wireless connection.

Bandwidth is impacted by many factors, but ultimately it comes down to your distance from a data hub.

If you live near a central data distribution center, you’ll have better bandwidth speeds and reliability. To make high bandwidth speeds available to more people, we branch our connections out to remote hubs so we can offer more people faster bandwidth.

Next time, we’ll tackle some of the common misconceptions about bandwidth and how to get the most from your internet service!

If there’s anything we can do to make your internet or managed service provider experience easier, shoot us a message or give us a call!