eli5: What is bandwidth?
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Bandwidth has two meanings.
For most things, bandwidth is how many boxes you can move at the same time. You can carry 3 boxes, but a moving truck can carry 50 at once. So the moving truck has more bandwidth. This meaning is also called “throughput”.
Wireless signals like wifi or radio use a different meaning.
Wireless signals need to be strong. So you usually send the message as loud as you can. So to make sounds that sound like language, you need a new way to send them. “Frequency Modulation” is that language, and it’s spoken by talking faster or slower. Bandwidth in wireless is usually the space between the fastest and slowest you can speak.
Other wireless signals use “Amplitude Modulation” where you speak louder or quieter to say a message. It is easier to make things with this language instead, but they are sometimes hard to hear. Bandwidth for these signals is the space between the loudest and quietest you can speak. So bandwidth for signals is *roughly* like how many letters there are in the alphabet.
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