Network bandwidth is the maximum possible amount of data transfer between two points of a network in a specific time.
Network Bandwidth Definition
Network bandwidth is a measure of the data transfer rate or capacity of a given network. It’s a crucial network measurement for understanding the speed and quality of a network.
Network bandwidth is commonly measured in bits per second (bps). In practice, organizations and internet service providers (ISPs) measure bandwidth in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps).
Network bandwidth vs. throughput
Bandwidth in networking is the maximum possible data transfer rate of a network or internet connection.
Throughput is the actual data transferred successfully in a network. Measuring network bandwidth doesn’t consider whether a test data transfer results in successful or unsuccessful data transmission. It simply calculates the amount of data transferred in the network.
Practically, the network throughput would always be less than the network bandwidth.
Various factors affect the throughput of a network, including a low network bandwidth that can lead to network congestion.
In some cases, a network component like a router receiving more data packets than its standard capacity may negatively impact the network’s throughput, even when the available bandwidth of the network is much higher. Other factors can also affect network throughput, such as packet loss, specific network protocols, and network devices, among others.
By monitoring the factors that affect network throughput with network bandwidth monitoring software, you can identify and troubleshoot problems that are causing performance issues. This can help to ensure that your network is running at its optimal performance.
Network bandwidth vs. speed
Bandwidth and speed are often misunderstood and thought of as the same. In proper technical terms, bandwidth and speed are two different yet related aspects of a network.
Bandwidth specifically refers to the capacity at which a network can transmit data. For example, if the bandwidth of a network is 40 Mbps, it implies that the network cannot transmit data faster than 40 Mbps in any given case.
On the other hand, network speed refers to the actual rate at which data is transmitted in a network. The speed of a network depends on the network and device factors such as the protocol used for the data transfer, a device’s wireless or wired network reception capacity, and a server’s ability to handle data transfer to multiple clients. A low network bandwidth also impacts network speed.
For example, if a client device in a network uses an 802.11b network adapter, it cannot accept a data transfer speed of more than 11 Mbps. This is due to the bandwidth limitation of the client device’s network adapter, even if faster data transfers are possible within the network.
What is a network bandwidth hog?
A network bandwidth hog is an application or endpoint consuming excessive bandwidth in a network. In an organization’s network, the presence of bandwidth hogs can lead to several challenges, including:
- Impact on employee productivity due to slower access to necessary web resources, such as email, document access, and online productivity apps.
- Increased network latency impacting response times of IT systems, such as databases, load balancers, and application servers.
- Disruptive end-user experience access to mission-critical applications, impacting revenue generation.
Several reasons or network events can lead to bandwidth hogs, including but not limited to:
- Streaming high-resolution video
- Uploading or downloading huge files or data sets
- Using an organization’s network for non-work purposes
- Malicious actors using techniques such as DDoS
- Unexpected traffic spikes due to a product release or update
- A bad network configuration or faulty network components
Network administrators can use monitoring tools specialized in identifying bandwidth hogs to analyze traffic and apply network policies to block traffic generated from non-work-related activities. Some monitoring tools also help determine the endpoint using excessive bandwidth and its user contact information. This helps system administrators solve the problem in different ways, including:
- Contact the user directly to understand reasonable causes for using excessive bandwidth
- Send a warning notification to the user requesting to limit bandwidth usage
- Limit the bandwidth allocated to the specific endpoint
- Increase bandwidth capacity to improve network quality
How to monitor network bandwidth
Network administrators can use monitoring solutions developed explicitly for bandwidth monitoring to manage and monitor network bandwidth.
Some solutions offer bandwidth monitoring as a capability in their broader network monitoring solutions. Using these solutions can reduce the number of tools required to monitor and manage an organization’s network. Other tools may offer dedicated solutions for bandwidth monitoring and management.
A comprehensive network bandwidth monitoring solution should help you:
- Monitor and analyze network traffic in real time
- Identify traffic related to non-business activities
- Identify network issues and bandwidth hogs causing bandwidth bottlenecks
- Enforce policies to ensure the quality of service and prioritize bandwidth allocation to mission-critical applications and processes
- Assess network quality by monitoring network throughput and speed at regular intervals
- Apply bandwidth throttling to non-critical activities and users to avoid bandwidth hogs
- Gain visibility into bandwidth utilization in terms of subnets, IP pools, protocols, users, endpoints, and applications
- Analyze traffic patterns and historical data to identify underutilization or overutilization
- Identify and possibly block traffic resulting from malicious activities
- Generate utilization reports to help better communicate and demonstrate efficient bandwidth management and any requirements for increasing overall capacity
How to plan network bandwidth
Network administrators should plan bandwidth capacity with the help of extensive analysis of optimal bandwidth required for various workloads, business applications, employee productivity, and other IT operations. Generally, administrators can rely on bandwidth monitoring tools to assess current utilization and forecast future needs.
It’s also critical to plan for the bandwidth capacity for an organization’s network; since underutilized capacity can result in suboptimal returns on investment, and inadequate capacity can hamper productivity and mission-critical operations.
Often, organizations rely on telecommunication companies and internet service providers (ISPs) for purchasing required internet bandwidth. This involves setting up service level agreements (SLAs) with terms and conditions related to minimum levels of service quality, network bandwidth, and uptime, among others.
However, it’s also vital to purchase bandwidth from a secondary ISP and set up failover mechanisms to ensure network resilience if the primary provider faces disruptions. Although SLAs would require a service provider to compensate for failing to maintain agreed-upon service levels, the loss in productivity and disruption to operations would result in more severe revenue losses. Hence, planning for network resilience is crucial.
How to increase network bandwidth
Network administrators often ponder upon one critical bandwidth management question: how do I increase network bandwidth?
While purchasing or planning for more bandwidth capacity is an obvious solution, it may increase the costs of maintaining a network. On the other hand, system administrators can analyze bandwidth utilization across an organization’s networks and discover optimization opportunities to increase utilization efficiency through various techniques.
Some network bandwidth optimization techniques include:
- Streamlining data flows in the network by creating network subnets and strategically installing routers, switches, and modems.
- Leveraging techniques such as traffic shaping, traffic policing, and load balancing to prioritize types of traffic and resources to decrease the possibility of network congestion and disruption to mission-critical applications and systems.
- Creating and enforcing granular policies to define which websites, applications, and systems are accessible in the network and block access to non-business-related sites and portals.
- Scheduling and managing software updates and backups in non-peak hours to avoid network congestion and productivity disruptions. For example, administrators can set up an upstream Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server to download updates from the internet once and distribute updates to Windows machines in the network locally to avoid congesting available internet bandwidth.
- Investing in a dedicated and highly capable bandwidth management solution to attain more granular control over bandwidth utilization and enforce policies more effectively.
Network administrators can also consider purchasing additional bandwidth capacity if all the possible opportunities to optimize the bandwidth are exhausted.
Network Bandwidth Definition
Network bandwidth is a measure of the data transfer rate or capacity of a given network. It’s a crucial network measurement for understanding the speed and quality of a network.
Network bandwidth is commonly measured in bits per second (bps). In practice, organizations and internet service providers (ISPs) measure bandwidth in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps).
Network bandwidth vs. throughput
Bandwidth in networking is the maximum possible data transfer rate of a network or internet connection.
Throughput is the actual data transferred successfully in a network. Measuring network bandwidth doesn’t consider whether a test data transfer results in successful or unsuccessful data transmission. It simply calculates the amount of data transferred in the network.
Practically, the network throughput would always be less than the network bandwidth.
Various factors affect the throughput of a network, including a low network bandwidth that can lead to network congestion.
In some cases, a network component like a router receiving more data packets than its standard capacity may negatively impact the network’s throughput, even when the available bandwidth of the network is much higher. Other factors can also affect network throughput, such as packet loss, specific network protocols, and network devices, among others.
By monitoring the factors that affect network throughput with network bandwidth monitoring software, you can identify and troubleshoot problems that are causing performance issues. This can help to ensure that your network is running at its optimal performance.
Network bandwidth vs. speed
Bandwidth and speed are often misunderstood and thought of as the same. In proper technical terms, bandwidth and speed are two different yet related aspects of a network.
Bandwidth specifically refers to the capacity at which a network can transmit data. For example, if the bandwidth of a network is 40 Mbps, it implies that the network cannot transmit data faster than 40 Mbps in any given case.
On the other hand, network speed refers to the actual rate at which data is transmitted in a network. The speed of a network depends on the network and device factors such as the protocol used for the data transfer, a device’s wireless or wired network reception capacity, and a server’s ability to handle data transfer to multiple clients. A low network bandwidth also impacts network speed.
For example, if a client device in a network uses an 802.11b network adapter, it cannot accept a data transfer speed of more than 11 Mbps. This is due to the bandwidth limitation of the client device’s network adapter, even if faster data transfers are possible within the network.
What is a network bandwidth hog?
A network bandwidth hog is an application or endpoint consuming excessive bandwidth in a network. In an organization’s network, the presence of bandwidth hogs can lead to several challenges, including:
- Impact on employee productivity due to slower access to necessary web resources, such as email, document access, and online productivity apps.
- Increased network latency impacting response times of IT systems, such as databases, load balancers, and application servers.
- Disruptive end-user experience access to mission-critical applications, impacting revenue generation.
Several reasons or network events can lead to bandwidth hogs, including but not limited to:
- Streaming high-resolution video
- Uploading or downloading huge files or data sets
- Using an organization’s network for non-work purposes
- Malicious actors using techniques such as DDoS
- Unexpected traffic spikes due to a product release or update
- A bad network configuration or faulty network components
Network administrators can use monitoring tools specialized in identifying bandwidth hogs to analyze traffic and apply network policies to block traffic generated from non-work-related activities. Some monitoring tools also help determine the endpoint using excessive bandwidth and its user contact information. This helps system administrators solve the problem in different ways, including:
- Contact the user directly to understand reasonable causes for using excessive bandwidth
- Send a warning notification to the user requesting to limit bandwidth usage
- Limit the bandwidth allocated to the specific endpoint
- Increase bandwidth capacity to improve network quality
How to monitor network bandwidth
Network administrators can use monitoring solutions developed explicitly for bandwidth monitoring to manage and monitor network bandwidth.
Some solutions offer bandwidth monitoring as a capability in their broader network monitoring solutions. Using these solutions can reduce the number of tools required to monitor and manage an organization’s network. Other tools may offer dedicated solutions for bandwidth monitoring and management.
A comprehensive network bandwidth monitoring solution should help you:
- Monitor and analyze network traffic in real time
- Identify traffic related to non-business activities
- Identify network issues and bandwidth hogs causing bandwidth bottlenecks
- Enforce policies to ensure the quality of service and prioritize bandwidth allocation to mission-critical applications and processes
- Assess network quality by monitoring network throughput and speed at regular intervals
- Apply bandwidth throttling to non-critical activities and users to avoid bandwidth hogs
- Gain visibility into bandwidth utilization in terms of subnets, IP pools, protocols, users, endpoints, and applications
- Analyze traffic patterns and historical data to identify underutilization or overutilization
- Identify and possibly block traffic resulting from malicious activities
- Generate utilization reports to help better communicate and demonstrate efficient bandwidth management and any requirements for increasing overall capacity
How to plan network bandwidth
Network administrators should plan bandwidth capacity with the help of extensive analysis of optimal bandwidth required for various workloads, business applications, employee productivity, and other IT operations. Generally, administrators can rely on bandwidth monitoring tools to assess current utilization and forecast future needs.
It’s also critical to plan for the bandwidth capacity for an organization’s network; since underutilized capacity can result in suboptimal returns on investment, and inadequate capacity can hamper productivity and mission-critical operations.
Often, organizations rely on telecommunication companies and internet service providers (ISPs) for purchasing required internet bandwidth. This involves setting up service level agreements (SLAs) with terms and conditions related to minimum levels of service quality, network bandwidth, and uptime, among others.
However, it’s also vital to purchase bandwidth from a secondary ISP and set up failover mechanisms to ensure network resilience if the primary provider faces disruptions. Although SLAs would require a service provider to compensate for failing to maintain agreed-upon service levels, the loss in productivity and disruption to operations would result in more severe revenue losses. Hence, planning for network resilience is crucial.
How to increase network bandwidth
Network administrators often ponder upon one critical bandwidth management question: how do I increase network bandwidth?
While purchasing or planning for more bandwidth capacity is an obvious solution, it may increase the costs of maintaining a network. On the other hand, system administrators can analyze bandwidth utilization across an organization’s networks and discover optimization opportunities to increase utilization efficiency through various techniques.
Some network bandwidth optimization techniques include:
- Streamlining data flows in the network by creating network subnets and strategically installing routers, switches, and modems.
- Leveraging techniques such as traffic shaping, traffic policing, and load balancing to prioritize types of traffic and resources to decrease the possibility of network congestion and disruption to mission-critical applications and systems.
- Creating and enforcing granular policies to define which websites, applications, and systems are accessible in the network and block access to non-business-related sites and portals.
- Scheduling and managing software updates and backups in non-peak hours to avoid network congestion and productivity disruptions. For example, administrators can set up an upstream Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server to download updates from the internet once and distribute updates to Windows machines in the network locally to avoid congesting available internet bandwidth.
- Investing in a dedicated and highly capable bandwidth management solution to attain more granular control over bandwidth utilization and enforce policies more effectively.
Network administrators can also consider purchasing additional bandwidth capacity if all the possible opportunities to optimize the bandwidth are exhausted.
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