What is Bandwidth? The Highway of the Internet
Understand what bandwidth actually measures, how it differs from speed, and why a high bandwidth connection doesn't always mean fast load times.
The Highway Analogy
Bandwidth is often confused with speed, but they are technically two different things. The best way to understand bandwidth is to imagine a highway. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway, while speed is how fast the cars are traveling.
If you have a 10 Mbps connection, you have a one-lane road. A 1000 Mbps (Gigabit) connection is a massive 100-lane superhighway. The cars (data packets) don't necessarily travel any faster on the 100-lane highway, but you can fit substantially more cars on the road at the exact same time without traffic jams.
Low Bandwidth: [Data] -> [ ] -> [Router] High Bandwidth: [Data] -> [ ] -> [Data] -> [ ] -> [Router] [Data] -> [ ] ->
Why This Affects Your Speed Test
When you run a speed test on our site, the "Download Speed" result is actually measuring your available bandwidth at that specific moment. The speed test server attempts to send as many files to your device as possible across multiple concurrent connections to see how wide your "highway" is.
If your test results are lower than the bandwidth you pay for, it means something is blocking the lanes. This could be network congestion in your neighborhood, other devices on your home Wi-Fi currently downloading large files, or a physical limitation in your wireless router.
Test Your Connection
Run a speed test while standing next to your router. Then, start a large file download on another computer in your house and run the test again on your phone. You will instantly see your available bandwidth drop because the other computer is occupying lanes on your internet highway.