What Is Bandwidth, Really?

This chapter of Manage IT Better answers a question owners hear from internet sales reps more often

than from their own staff: how much bandwidth does the office actually need?

Sean Pennington walks through the definition first. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can travel over

your internet connection. Carriers quote it in megabits or gigabits per second (Mbps or Gbps). That is

not the same as megabytes. The conversion in the video is simple: 100 megabits equals 12.5

megabytes, so a 500 Mbps circuit shows about 62.5 megabytes of throughput. Mix those units and you

will overbuy.

The highway analogy is the rest of the lesson. Bandwidth is the number of lanes. A single-lane

connection backs up when several people stream, download, or sit on a video call at once. Extra lanes

keep traffic moving. Too few lanes and sessions stall, files crawl, cloud apps time out, and a meeting

can drop the way a car runs out of gas in a jam.

That has a real cost. Remote teams type over each other in shared documents. An e-commerce site

that loads slowly loses rank and sales. Staff wait. Work stretches.

The other half of the talk is the part ISPs skip. More capacity usually makes work smoother, but a four-

person office that browses the web and watches the occasional training video does not need a half-gig

or a gigabit circuit. Sean’s own office move is the example: the carrier pushed gig service first. He

declined, kept the spend down, and noted you can always raise the plan later. Starting at the top of the

rate card is how you pay for empty lanes.

Watch the video if you are sizing a new circuit, reviewing a renewal, or trying to explain frozen calls

without buying the most expensive package on the sheet

Key Takeaways

• Bandwidth is how much data your connection can carry at once, usually quoted in megabits or gigabits per second (Mbps or Gbps).

• Megabits are not megabytes. 100 Mbps equals about 12.5 MBps. A 500 Mbps circuit is about62.5 MBps of throughput.

• Low capacity shows up as frozen video calls, slow downloads, interrupted cloud sessions, andconnections that time out.

• A small office doing light web work and occasional training video often needs far less than a 500

• Mbps or gigabit plan. The video’s working range for that use is about 10 to 15 MBps of

  download.

• You can raise a circuit later. You do not have to start on the highest tier the ISP quotes.

• Ask an MSP who already sees your traffic before you sign what the sales rep recommends