bandwith. What is this?

[sinotto]

Can anybody tell me what does bandwith mean, in simple
words? I've 5 Giga of traffic, but I don't know about bandwith.
Thanks
Sinotto

[doron]

it means how many gigabyte you transfered, ie, how much data was sent to your users.

[FamMan]

It's sort of like a highway. A 2 lane highway can handle a certain amount of traffic while a four lane can handle even more. A six lane highway can handle even more traffic, so on and so on.

The same is true with bandwidth. Hosting companies have different size highways, so to speak. The size of their highway(T1, DC3, etc.) determines the amount of traffic they can handle in and out of their servers.

When you are given a limit of 5Gigs a month, that is kind of like using a toll road. The toll road may be 6 lanes wide and can handle 10000 cars, but you only have access to drive say 50 cars along that toll road. The hosting company must disperse that bandwidth among all it's users, so they limit you to how much you can use their highway(bandwidth).

[thetakerfan]

hmmm, never heard it put like that, but its a pretty good analogy

[sinotto]

Thank you everybody.
Sinotto

[Martie]

Here is a great resource, with several articles, including bandwidth! Check it out.
http://www.hosthelp.com