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Briefly explain what bandwidth is and explain why it is important in displaying images and Web pages today?

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Question added by Maalik Muhamed , Deputy Mill Manager , AZANIA GROUP OF COMPANYS
Date Posted: 2014/05/27
Faryal Ahmed
by Faryal Ahmed , Marketing Manager , Asil and Company Chartered Accountants

Bandwidth is defined as the amount of information that can flow through a network connection in a given period of time. The Networks are constantly coming out with more of the bandwidth-intensive applications that include web2.0, mobile video and Internet video on-demand. In order To meet these requirements, server load balancers have become one of the most important elements for network infrastructures. As the web application traffic is increasing because of the3G,3.5G,4G, and WiMAX , its demand increases exponentially. With increasing web traffic, the service providers have been adding more networking switches, servers, routers and load balancers constantly. These service providers need to address the increasing devices, space and other issues rapidly and also they need to manage the challenges for the increasing number of these devices. Bandwidth is an important factor for the sites that utilize high-resolution graphics, flash, multiple paging, and other larger files.

Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet.  Bandwidth is measured in bits (a single0 or1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

Each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic .

If you want to see a website with  of  200kb homepage , you would create200kb of traffic between the web page and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download  has a1000kb connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site, your200kb file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if six other people are all  trying to access at the same time,1200kb (6 x200kb) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has1000kb of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone will be slower. If100 people all came to the site the transfers would be extremely slow.

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. The bigger and more complicated your web design with full of heavy images , the more bandwidth you are going to use up whenever someone visits even your homepage.A page with more images will require more bandwidth to download.

For example, the home page for CNN.com is about200KB (200 Kilobytes =200,000 bytes =1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about70KB.While Google Homepage size is just15k (code +8.5k logo image).

Cheers!

 

Muhammad Majid Saleem
by Muhammad Majid Saleem , Senior PHP Developer / Project Manager , SwaamTech

What bandwidth is:

In its most basic definition, bandwidth describes the level of traffic and data allowed to travel and transfer between your site, users, and the Internet.

 

Why it is important in displaying images and Web pages today?

- heavy images and web pages uses more bandwidth in loading so if heavy traffic comes to your site and your site has heavy images and web pages, your bandwidth will be consumed.

Abel Wilson
by Abel Wilson , Art Director , Al Jooda Al Faeqa

Bandwidth is simply a measurement of bitrate of consumed or available data communication expressed in bits per sec (bits/sec, Kb/sec, Mb/sec, Gb/sec, Tb/Sec)Imagine if your internet connection was a pipe filled with water (data) rushing to your tap (computer) which is pumped in from a water reservoir (Server) Now the bandwidth would be the maximum volume of water that the pipe could contain at any given time. Now if the tap (computer) was turned on, all the water would rush out of it. However if any other taps (Mobile phones, tablets, other computers, etc) connected to the pipe were turned on, the flow of the water coming out of the first tap would decrease in order to accomodate the other tap as well (Since the maximum volume of the water available in that main pipe can not change.) This is important from a conusmer's point of view because everytime we visit a server and images are downloaded, they consume data. Since the bandwidth is limited, the total amount of data their device can consume  at any given second is also limited. This means images that are heavier in size take longer times to load on to the consumer's device. The danger of a slow loading website is that a consumer may lose interest and be distracted by something else. The best way to combat this is to lower the quantity of an images' size as far as quality can allow. This, or by saving jpeg image as progressive scans (meaning the jpeg is devided into layers. Rather than having bits of the completed image load at one time, you have different layers of the image appear at once, giving the illusion that the complete image is increasing in quality with every second that passes by)

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