Cellular carriers' competing claims as to what constitutes 4G (fourth-generation) cellular data networks got me to thinking about how speed is only one part of the story about why allegedly faster networks are being built. I've been writing about Wi-Fi since 2000, and that informs my thinking, because Wi-Fi has matured to a point where raw speed doesn't have the same marketing value it once did, because networks are generally fast enough. Instead, multiple properties come into play.
I want to talk about bandwidth, throughput, latency, and capacity, and how each of these items relates to one another.
Let me start all folksy with analogies. For simplicity's sake, let's consider a medium-sized city that serves water to all its residents through one central reservoir. The reservoir's capacity represents the total pool of water it can deliver at one time to residents through pipes of varying sizes and at different distances.
To read the full, original article click on this link: What We Talk about When We Talk about Bandwidth - Boing Boing
Author: Glenn Fleishman
