Okay, I don't know everything about technology. But I am learning more as I go along. I just know c. 20 years ago, when I first went on the internet, everyone was talking about "bandwidth". People were complaining chain letters were endangering our precious bandwidth on the internet. Not just for one site. The whole internet. I'm serious. Some even took it further than that. Post one cookie recipe, post two, but stop there on our website, because it'll endanger, internet, bandwidth, as I said. I haven't heard the term since then. What was it? And why were computer savvy people worried about trivial things that could endanger it, like chain letters?
What is network bandwidth and how is it measured? In the early days there was less bandwidth, it was a more noticeably finite resource.
What bandwidth means and where the name comes from are two different things. What it usually means is data transmission rate. These days, it is typically measured in Mbps or Gbps. I am old enough to remember when it was measured in baud (bps). 9600 baud (9.6 kbps) was considered pretty darned fast, and it was, compared to 110 bps, which I have also used. Why is it called bandwidth? Because when you modulate s data signal onto a radio carrier wave, the frequency of the carrier spreads out in direct proportion to the data rate. So the "bandwidth" is literally the width of the frequency band that the radio signal occupies. This is why you can't cram unlimited radio stations together in a frequency band. The data rate - the band width - would make the stations' signals bump into each other.
A perfect explanation, I assume that it must be your job. LOL Here in the UK, just at the start of the internet, at the advent of DTMF telephone to replace pulse, BT opened around 8 enhanced electronic exchanges. They advertised that they would support internet up to 2Mbps. Needless to say they soon became obsolete, but BT stuck by their guns and introduced LLU switches (local loop unbundling), while promoting ISDN over ADSL. The LLU switches provided 8Mbs through multiplexing, but they were highly unreliable. The exchanges were eventually upgraded to full digital. We have now upgraded to full fibre with a shared bit rate up to the full 3Gbps, typically 500Mbps for domestic. What few people realise it that much of the the speed difference is providing public Wi-Fi directly from peoples homes and businesses.
Bandwidth is the same as water flowing through a pipe, if you push too much water all at once, the pipe will break. Push too much electricity through a wire, and it melts. The internet has a limited capacity and, for example, you can't push too much data onto the internet, all at once, from this website, because the host server can only move so much data so fast, without melting. I'm Melting!
Ok here's the REAL answer. In the first few years of the internet to host a website you needed your own server with a modem. As KathyL pointed out they started at around 1200 baud and went up to 9600 baud over PHONE LINES, before other technologies came into play. It wasn't that the local service providers didn't have bandwidth or the Internet itself. The first bottleneck was getting data out of the server. The chain letters weren't really an issue, but people were warned against getting involved in them. It was one of the first Internet scams. That's why it is notorious. I had friends who ran one of the first BBSs where people could post up files so others could download them. They had built shelves with motherboards, power supplies, hds and modems hooked up with one phone line each. They could only serve one user per each modem, so they would max out at about 12 or so. That was all a computer could handle at first, just one phone line each.
People think the internet is a new invention, but you can think of it as just another kind of radio or tv, in fact, most of it is cellphone activity and just business transactions. The internet most are familiar with, is nothing like the rest, and bandwidth also refers to how repetitious people become.
I knew a guy that ran a bulletin board called Maximum Security on a Commodore 64 with three daisy chained 1541 floppy drives. Probably running at 300 baud, maybe up to 900. He'd get cracked games from England then put them on drive 3. You'd then call him on a phone line and type in a password to access drive 3. Then you could download the cracked game. Took forever so he'd just make me copies and hand them to me. I remember a program we used called Ice Pick to crack store bought games.
Bandwidth is the frequency spectrum allotted for a signal, also the spectrum a signal produces. Either, depending on whether speaking of a channel or conduit, or speaking of a particular signal. Bandwidth is adopted to describe an internet conduit capacity to move data, even though not technically true, the capacity to move data is directly proportional to the bandwidth of the conduit or signal, whichever is the limiting factor. It was likely adopted by a marketing team after a meeting with engineering and hearing that bandwidth available set maximum data rate. More bandwidth! hehe
The EU recently patented a single quantum optical transistor, that can do any quantum Fibonacci series almost instantly. In other words, its a complete oxymoron, a computer that only has a single transistor, capable of running the entire Star Trek holodeck. The issue is information is nothing like all the lies we've been fed, and I'm working on the quantum mechanics of information theory. The simple fact is, there are shortcuts you can take to acquire information, on even macroscopic scales, because the truth itself is up to 125% efficient.
The packet is the size of each block that is transmitted during streaming. With 4k HD the time included is therefore fairly small. With the internet always finding the quickest rout, at peak times, the packets can get out of sequence, causing the download to fail. With advances in video quality, it is time for larger packet size. Uploading raw RGB data from distributor for storage at cinemas is not viable at the moment, particularly at high refresh rates above 50 Hz Modern servers are now far more advanced .than the internets current means of data transfer.
Nobody has software to run a holodeck, but people are building the first crude ones for commercial use. At the rate the technology is going, theaters will soon be replaced with holodecks, but the cost of the hardware won't come down for another century. Its related to weapons.
Not for long, someone figured out how to run any number of different frequencies down existing fiber optics. If I remember correctly, its about half a million times more data at once. Servers will eventually have to convert to all optical circuitry.
