2. Bandwidth

Any communication channel has to be able to transmit information from one location to another. The method might be analogue such as radio or it might be digital such as a computer network.

Bandwidth is a measure of the capability of a communication channel to transmit information.

In the analogue domain, it is measured in 'Hertz' or Cycles Per Second. For instance a typical PAL television channel has a bandwidth of 8 Megahertz. Which means all the video and audio signals for a TV channel resides in this set of frequencies.

In theory you could define the bandwidth of a digital system in terms of frequency, but it is far more useful to describe bandwidth in terms of bits per second. After all, you are not particularly interested in the shape of the digital signal but rather how much information can the network handle.

So, digital networks are measured in Bits Per Second or bps.

Generally the wider the bandwidth the faster it is.

It is important to note that it is 'bits' per second not 'byte' which of course is 8 bits.