"It's not the speed of your modem, it's the size of your bandwidth " anon Actually, it's both Bandwidth is the size of the "highway" through which your internet data is passed At times, the information "super" highway may not seem so super That's because the more information being passed through this highway, the slower it goes Just like I-5 at rush hour, the more cars, the slower the going If they were to expand I-5 into a 20 lane highway, things would flow much more smoothly Your internet connection is your highway and modems are freeway entrances and exits The term "bandwidth" is a collective term for all this (except the modem part)
Describes the frequency limits of the signals a communications channel uses Bandwidth may be physically limited by the medium used for transmission (wires or cables) or it may be artificially limited by communications standards A common analogy for bandwith is a water pipe The larger the pipe (the higher the bandwidth) the more water (more data) it can carry And just as water pressure can drop when a lot of people draw water from a single pipeline, bandwidth can be used up (resulting in slower Internet speeds) if a lot of peoples are using the same lines to connect to the internet