Bandwidth Resources, Bandwidth Quotes, Bandwidth Descriptions, and Bandwidth Definitions!T1-Bandwidth AKA: Broadband, Bandwidth, Bandwidth T1, Broadband T1, High Speed Internet, Dedicated - We offer the best Broadband Internet access rates on DSL, T1, T3, DS3, and OC3 line connection service providers, with real-time quotes, a low-price guarantee, and a call from an independent broadband consultant - all for FREE! Bandwidth is a measure of frequency range and is typically measured in hertz. Bandwidth is a central concept in many fields, including information theory, radio communications, signal processing, and spectroscopy. Bandwidth is related to channel capacity for information transmission and often the two can be confused. In particular, in common usage "bandwidth" also refers to data (information) transmission rates when communicating over certain media or devices.
OverviewBandwidth is a key concept in many applications. In radio communications, for example, bandwidth is the range of frequencies occupied by a modulated carrier wave, whereas in optics it is the width of an individual spectral line or the entire spectral range. There is no single universal precise definition of bandwidth, as it is vaguely understood to be a measure of how wide a function is in the frequency domain. For different applications there are different precise definitions. For example, one definition of bandwidth could be the range of frequencies beyond which the frequency function is zero. This would correspond to the mathematical notion of the support of a function (i.e., the total "length" of values for which the function is nonzero). A less strict and more practically useful definition will refer to the frequencies where the frequency function is small. Small could mean less than 3 dB below (i.e., less than half of) the maximum value, or more rarely 10 dB, or it could mean below a certain absolute value. As with any definition of the width of a function, many definitions are suitable for different purposes. According to the Shannon–Hartley theorem, the data rate of reliable communication is directly proportional to the frequency range of the signal used for the communication. In this context, the word bandwidth can refer to either the data rate or the frequency range of the communication system (or both). Analog systems For analog signals, which can be mathematically viewed as functions of time, bandwidth BW or Δf is the width, measured in hertz, of the frequency range in which the signal's Fourier transform is nonzero. Because this range of non-zero amplitude may be very broad, this definition is often relaxed so that the bandwidth is defined as the range of frequencies where the signal's Fourier transform has a power above a certain amplitude threshold, commonly half the maximum value (half power A baseband bandwidth is a specification of only the highest frequency limit of a signal. A non-baseband bandwidth is a difference between highest and lowest frequencies. As an example, the (non-baseband) 3-dB bandwidth of the function depicted in the figure is A commonly used quantity is fractional bandwidth. This is the bandwidth of a device divided by its center frequency. E.g., a device that has a bandwidth of 2 MHz with center frequency 10 MHz will have a fractional bandwidth of 2/10, or 20%. The fact that real baseband systems have both negative and positive frequencies can lead to confusion about bandwidth, since they are sometimes referred to only by the positive half, and one will occasionally see expressions such as B = 2W, where B is the total bandwidth, and W is the positive bandwidth. For instance, this signal would require a lowpass filter with cutoff frequency of at least W to stay intact. The 3-dB bandwidth of an electronic filter is the part of the filter's frequency response that lies within 3 dB of the response at its peak, which is typically at or near its center frequency. In signal processing and control theory the bandwidth is the frequency at which the closed-loop system gain drops 3 dB below peak. In basic electric circuit theory when studying Band-pass and Band-reject filters the bandwidth represents the distance between the two points in the frequency domain where the signal is In photonics, the term bandwidth occurs in a variety of meanings:
Digital systemsWhen used to discuss digital communication, the meaning of "bandwidth" is clouded by metaphorical use. Technicians sometimes use it as slang for baud rate, the rate at which symbols may be transmitted through the system. It is also used more colloquially to describe channel capacity, the rate at which bits may be transmitted through the system (see Shannon Limit). Hence, a digital data bus with a bit rate of 66 Mbps on each of 32 separate data lines may properly be said to have a bandwidth of 33 MHz and a capacity of 2.1 Gbit/s — but it would not be surprising to hear such a bus described as having a "bandwidth of 2.1 Gbit/s." Similar confusion exists for voiceband modems, where each symbol carries multiple bits of information so that a modem may transmit 56 kbit/s of information over a phone line with a bandwidth of only 4 kHz and a symbol rate of 8 Kbaud. A related metric which is used to measure the aggregated bandwidth of a whole network is bisection bandwidth. Bandwidth is also used in the sense of commodity, referring to something limited or something costing money. Thus, communication costs bandwidth, and improper use of someone else's bandwidth may be called bandwidth theft. In discrete time systems and digital signal processing, bandwidth is related to sampling rate according to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. When Additive white Gaussian noise is present in a digital communication channel, the Shannon–Hartley theorem gives the relationship between the channel's bandwidth, the channel's capacity, and the Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ratio of the system. Meaning of bandwidth in web hostingIn website hosting, the term "bandwidth" is often used metaphorically, to describe the amount of data that can be transferred to or from the website or server, measured in bytes transferred over a prescribed period of time. This can be more accurately described as "Monthly Data Transfer". Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 500 gigabytes per month. If visitors to the website download a total greater than 500 gigabytes in one month, the bandwidth limit will have been exceeded. See also
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, whereas other definitions of bandwidth would yield a different answer.
of the maximum signal amplitude (half power).