Define different Internet bandwidth technologies or link types.
Internet Bandwidth Technologies
A connection to the Internet must precede a connection to a Web site on the Internet. This lesson focuses on the various types of Internet connections. Beyond the various hardware and software used to establish a network connection, you must consider the internet bandwidth technologies or links used to carry the data. They determine how fast Web site data can be sent or received and these bandwidth technologies are the communications gateways between the various LANs of the Internet.
Data is transmitted via Pipes
Data is transmitted throughout a network by a combination of pipes and supporting protocols. "Pipe" is a commonly used word for transmission wire. The measure of how much data can pass through a pipe is known as bandwidth. The size of a communications pipe is measured in terms of how many bits, or binary digits, it can transmit per second.
A pipe is a method used to pass information from one program process to another.
Unlike other types of interprocess communication, a pipe only offers one-way communication by passing a parameter or output from one process to another. The information that is passed through the pipe is held by the system until it can be read by the receiving process.
Pipes are primarily used in programming on Unix systems.
The following series of images below lists the types of pipes organized by speed, slowest to fastest.
Bandwidth Technologies
In computer networks, bandwidth is used as a synonym for data transfer rate, the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period (usually a second). Network bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps); modern networks typically have speeds measured in the millions of bits per second (megabits per second, or Mbps) or billions of bits per second (gigabits per second, or Gbps).
Bandwidth is the range of frequencies, the difference between the highest-frequency signal component and the lowest-frequency signal component, an electronic signal uses on a given transmission medium. Like the frequency of a signal, bandwidth is measured in hertz (cycles per second). This is the original meaning of bandwidth, although it is now used primarily in discussions about cellular networks and the spectrum of frequencies that operators license from various governments for use in mobile services.
In business, bandwidth is sometimes used as a synonym for capacity or ability. In this sense, bandwidth usually refers to having time or staffing available to tackle something.
In the next lesson, the various protocols for Internet connection technologies will be discussed in the next lesson.