Business accounts with fiber optics can range much higher. In the home, bandwidth can range anywhere from 28.8 kilobits per second through the modem on an ancient AOL account to 1 gigabit (1 billion bits per second) if you are one of the lucky people to have a direct fiber optic connection to your home.

So if your ISP promised you 8 megabits per second (8 Mbps) it would take a little over a second to deliver that photo once the download started. A medium-resolution photo might be one megabyte (one million bytes or 1 MB), which in turn is 8 million bits (or slightly more, since some people use 1 kilobit = 1024 bits). It takes 8 bits (called a byte, usually represented by a capital “B” in abbreviations) to represent one single letter or number on your computer screen. Bandwidth is measured in bits per second.Ī single bit is a very small piece of information. Data from the internet ultimately consists of units of information called bits.

Water delivery is typically measured in gallons or liters per minute. Just as the size of the water pipe to your house determines how much water can flow into your home, the capacity of the internet pipe into your house, called “bandwidth,” determines how much data can flow. Along with providing access to the wide world of cyberspace, they probably promised a certain amount of information in a certain amount of time. When you signed up for the internet, your internet service provider (ISP) made you some promises.

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