Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to the capacity of a transition link. The higher the amount of bandwidth, the more data can be transferred. When the Internet was new, the only way for normal home users to connect was using a standard modem. The amount of bandwidth that was available was very low. Now the bandwidth available for the typical home user is much higher, since most users now have broadband connections such as cable or DSL. This offers significantly higher bandwidth. The use of fiberoptics between telephone exchanges and the homes of Internet users will further increase bandwidth availability.

For online merchants who are hosting a website, bandwidth is an important consideration. Most web hosting plans include a certain amount of bandwidth. Generally, the higher the bandwidth, the higher the monthly hosting cost. It is important to sign up to the right hosting plan. If the amount of bandwidth available for the website is too low, then customers may get error messages or may be confronted with long delays, particularly when downloading images or large files.

In the past, availability of sufficient bandwidth between Internet service providers on different continents used to be a problem. However, there are now several major fiberoptic link that provide a massive amount of bandwidth between the continents.