eA Marketing - Glossary

bandwidth

How much data can be transmitted in a time period over a communications channel, often expressed in kilobits per second (kbps).

The difference between bandwidth and data transfer causes much confusion and is worth noting.

Bandwidth is a rate and data transfer is a total. For example, you might buy bandwidth of 128 kbps for a maximum monthly data transfer of roughly 40 GB.

128 kbps

per second
per minute
per hour
per day
per month

= bits

128,000
7,680,000
460,800,000
11,059,200,000
331,776,000,000

= bytes

16,000
960,000
57,600,000
1,382,400,000
41,472,000,000

divide by one billion
~41 gigabytes/month

Note: many hosts use the terms bandwidth and data transfer interchangeably, referring to a monthly data allowance as bandwidth.

Synonyms: n/a

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