Bandwidth

To understand the concept of bandwidth, lets imagine your Ethernet cables are water pipes. Your basic Ethernet connection would be a water pipe that can let 10 gallons of water flow into your home (computer) every hour. Now if you want to fill up your new swimming pool with water, you would be limited by your pipe as to the amount of water that can pass through at any given time.

In comparison, let’s install a pipe that lets you send 100 gallons of water into your home every hour. This is like a Fast Ethernet network connection, which would let water flow at a rate 10 times as fast. Traffic running on a network is like water running through the pipe.

At 10Mbps data can only flow at 10 mega bits per second. The larger the ‘bit rate’ translates into more data that can flow at any given time. Every switch identifies what bandwidth it can handle. A 10/100 Fast Ethernet Switch is capable of running at 10Mbps and/or at 100 Mbps, depending on what is connected to it. While a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch is also capable of running at 1Gbps (gigabits per second). If your network equipment is rated at 100Mbps, you can send data ten times as fast as 10Mpbs equipment. Some networking equipment can run at 1000Mbps (1Gpbs) or even 10Gbps.

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