First of all, what is the difference between bandwidth and speed? Is there a difference at all? They are the same, right? The short answer to this is no, so let’s look into this in more detail.
To start with, what do we mean when we say “bandwidth”? Essentially, this is the capacity or the amount of data that can be transmitted over an electronic channel during a specific period of time. Think of it like the lanes on a highway, it allows more traffic to go through at once whilst still retaining higher speeds. A lone car can speed down a single lane road, in the same way a lone network request can function with low bandwidth capabilities.
But what happens when you have multiple requests going through a network simultaneously? For example, one user using a VOIP program such as Skype and a second user requesting to download files from the cloud will suffer slow speeds and poor quality because these requests are held in a queue and completed one after the other. A high-bandwidth connection, on the other hand, can service many users and requests without sacrificing speed which translates into better performance for users, just like a highway has multiple cars moving alongside each other at once.
A lower bandwidth internet connection will not (generally) allow for uninterrupted media streaming, even with smaller audio files. Other processes, such as uploading and downloading files, are also significantly slower than, say, broadband or high-bandwidth connections which negatively affects office productivity, especially in the hospitality sector, where you can expect slower payment processing as a result.
In most major cities’ centres in the UK, including central London, there is a reliance on ADSL due to old copper infrastructure which limits the internet bandwidth. So, how do you work around this? The easiest way to improve bandwidth in this situation is to purchase and install a high speed dedicated leased line – however, this comes with its own set of issues.
First and foremost, the cost in not sustainable for small to medium (or even in some cases larger) non-technology based organisations, and they are not always readily available in the most central areas of bigger cities such as London.
TowerWatch has a way around this – we can implement a combination of solutions to increase your bandwidth with the ability to also manage and control it! Which ultimately means you reduce costs or the need for super-high-bandwidth solutions. Without giving away all of our trade secrets, this is what we can do:
Give you multiple cheaper lines combined with a high-grade business router
- This gives you smart traffic load balancing, making sure your important data is always transferred first!
- Options for redundancy in case of internet outages
- Reports on bandwidth usage allowing you to see where your bandwidth is being monopolised
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A world-class WiFi solution
- Control – Allowing you the control over all your wireless devices bandwidth usage prioritising business devices over personal ones.
- Great reliability – some of our clients do not even know where their access points are, having never touched them for a reboot!
- Super coverage – meaning your employees can work freely without worrying about speed or signal
All the above gives you the full system solution with the correct bandwidth and speed for your business needs without wasting your monthly income on excess IT expenditure. This means you will be able to focus on what your business does best without worrying about how slow your internet is, because let’s be honest, this is the worst!
Written by James Ratcliffe – Project Manager at Towerwatch Solutions LTD
Visit our IT Solutions page for more information on what we can do for you.
