Bandwidth Definition: Overview and History

What Is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the data transfer capacity of a network in bits per second (Bps). The term may also be used colloquially to indicate a person's capacity for tasks or deep thoughts at a point in time.

Understanding Bandwidth

Bandwidth is a measure of how much information a network, a group of two or more devices that communicate between themselves, can transfer. Data moves from A to B just as water flows through pipes from a supply point to our faucets. The volume that's transported varies, impacting how effectively a transmission medium, such as an internet connection, operates.

Internet service providers (ISPs) typically denote bandwidth speeds in millions of bits per second (Bps), or megabits (Mbps), and billions of Bps, or gigabits (Gbps). Generally speaking, the higher the bandwidth, the quicker a device downloads information from the internet, including emails or streamed movies.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines broadband internet speeds as connections with a bandwidth of 25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads. Providers state the bandwidth measurement to customers, although the number they quote may not always reflect what a customer actually gets.

The connection could have a bottleneck where one network is limited by the lowest speed going to several devices at once. More devices connected to one connecting device slow down the bandwidth for everyone who shares the connection.

Recording Bandwidth

Any device can measure the bandwidth it has at any given time. Special websites or the Internet Service Provider can calculate the bandwidth by sending a file through the connection and then waiting for the information to return.

Bandwidth Requirements

The amount of bandwidth required to surf the web seamlessly depends on the task the user wishes to undertake.

For instance, an instant messaging conversation may use 1,000 bits, or one kilobit, per second in bandwidth. A voice-over internet conversation, in which someone's voice transmits through internet connections, typically uses more than 1 Mbps to 3 megabits per second.

Moving further up the scale, standard-definition video takes 1 Mbps, while 4k needs at least 15 Mbps. The highest available, 8k, requires speeds of nearly 100 Mbps for seamless viewing.

History of Bandwidth

Since 1994, the internet has transformed from a niche technology serving mainly to interconnect laboratories engaged in government research to a key part of everyday life. In 1995, 0.68% of the world's population reportedly had access to the internet. Fast-forward to 2022: two-thirds of the globe is connected.

People now depend on the internet to communicate, purchase goods, earn an income, gain access to information, and entertain themselves. Over the years, the technology has become more content-heavy, sophisticated, and populated, meaning the amount of bandwidth required to use it effectively has increased substantially.

From May 2018 to May 2019, the average internet speed surged 20.65% to 11.03 Mbps; in 2022, the average speed increased to 29.79 Mpbs. Ookla, a company specializing in internet testing and analysis, claimed that Qatar had the best bandwidth capabilities in the world in 2022, with online speeds of 176.18 Mbps—far more than the average of 74.83 Mbps registered in the United States.

Bandwidth demand is expected to continue growing over the next few years. By 2025, the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day across the globe. Estimates in 2022 place daily data generation at 2.5 quintillion bytes per day.