– Where does all the bandwidth on the internet come from? Is there a finite amount or do they just create more and how?

Question

– Where does all the bandwidth on the internet come from? Is there a finite amount or do they just create more and how?

In: 4

Answer 1

The internet is just a really big network.

In the simplest sense, a network is two interconnected devices. There’s the sender, the recipient and the connection media (wired, wireless, cables, routers, switches etc). Bandwidth is the maximum rate that the connecting media can operate.

This is different from “real world bandwidth” or “effective bandwidth”. If the sender has a 14.4kbps modem and the recipient has a 100mbit fiber link, the effective bandwidth will be close to 14.4kbps, because that’s all the sender is capable of.

So the way they add bandwidth is by either upgrading or aggregating the physical media (combining multiple slower wires to make one big fast wire), and upgrading the routing equipment to faster speeds. This is why you see those annoying Sonic ads on youtube, “Sonic installs… fiber optic blah blah blah Skip Ad”