Bandwidth

In the parlance of computer jocks, "bandwidth" describes the amount of data a network can transport in a certain period of time. In other words, bandwidth is a capacity for rate of transfer, usually expressed in bits per second. Think of it this way: Your corporate network is like a highway. In a given moment, only one car per lane can pass a given point on that highway. During rush hour, bottlenecks cause traffic to slow to a crawl, and you arrive home late for dinner. Too many cars, not enough lanes. It’s the same when your network has too much information flowing between computers and not enough bandwidth. Everything slows down, and in extreme cases, your data may never get to where it’s going.

OK. So what does bandwidth mean for my company? Every time you communicate with another person or another computer (like the server or mainframe) via your computer, you are moving bits of information over the network. Some activities, such as sending e-mail, create very little traffic. They’re like compact cars, if you will. By comparison, if you send a large document or an engineering diagram, that’s more like driving a tractor-trailer truck through the network because you’re sending lots and lots of bits. The more people using your corporate network, the more congested the network becomes. At first, that may simply slow down the system and force you to sit twiddling your thumbs while your computer retrieves the information you’ve requested. If the overcrowding gets too bad, data may get lost in transit because it crashes into other stuff.

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If our computers are slowing down, does that mean I should buy more network bandwidth? Possibly. Older networks (and even modern modems) tend to move data at slower rates. But buying more bandwidth often means scrapping what’s in place and upgrading to a different kind of network technology altogether. You can’t always pave over the old road to build a bigger one, you have to dig up the old road first.

Many networks today are based on a technology called Ethernet, which has a standard bandwidth of 10Mbps (10 million bits per second); in one second, 10 megabits of data can move through any given spot on the network. And the new Fast Ethernet has transmission speeds of 100Mbps. As technology continues to evolve, even more advanced networks have been developed that offer transmission rates greater than 1Gbps (that’s gigabits, or 1 billion bits, per second).

Of course, the bottleneck that’s hampering your computer’s performance could be located in some area other than the network. The central servers might just be too scrawny, or they might need a faster way to get at the data in central storage. It’ll take some careful analysis to locate the problem. And then, you can’t just throw money at it (music to your ears, no doubt). You’ll have to evaluate what will provide the most bang for your buck.