|
Bandwidth Bandwidth is a range of size and speed that can be carried over a wireless or wired communication link within a period of time (Bandwidth 1). To be technical, it is defined as the "width of range of frequencies that an electronic signal occupies on a given transmission medium," or "the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time (Bandwidth 1)." Bandwidth’s digital ranges are measured in bits of data per second (bps) or bytes per second. Bandwidth’s analog ranges are measured in cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz). Hertz are the number of cycles of change per second. This is the lowest frequencies signal components and the highest frequencies signal component. The broader the bandwidth allows for more quality of the streaming video (Bandwidth 1). Bandwidth is limited because of the way it works. Bandwidth is made up of wires that are connected to servers on the global network. These wires can only carry so much data. When a user tries to obtain more data than the wire can handle, the transmission of the data is slowed down, and it is known to be "hogged" or "bottlenecked.' You can find out if someone is stealing your bandwidth by going to the search engine of AltaVista and typing in: image: www.guess.com (or whatever website you are searching for). It matches 28 results that show images linked to their own server, Twenty-eight different sites are hogging bandwidth and possibly copyright violations also. This leads to bandwidth theft. Theft is created when movie files, sound files, image files, or documents are linked to the server of the original image (Bandwidth and You 1). For instance, one can link an image to their own server using the tag: <img src="guess.jpg"> or they can link an image directly to the server that hosts the original image by typing :< img src=http://www.guess.com/guess.jpg>. Every time the web pages loads by using the code previously explained, it has to use the bandwidth from the original server to upload the image off of Guess’s server onto your webpage. This is illegal and the websites could charge a fee to any of its bandwidth violators if it found out about these violations (Bad 1). There are some things that could easily hog bandwidth. It can easily be hogged by putting onto the web pictures that have static. These pictures don’t look too clear and have a lot of different colors in them. The more colors in the image, the bigger the image file will be, and the longer the file will take to load. Also, resizing a larger image to a smaller image causes problems for file size as well as rendering an image at a higher dpi than necessary. The coding of the web page can also affect how much bandwidth is used. When the HTML is coded, certain codes called metatags are embedded into the web page. These cannot be seen by a regular visitor, but they are used to help search engines list the web pages. They contain keywords and such. If the coder uses a lot of keywords ad such in the metatages, this could hog bandwidth. Also, if the coser hides large portions of comments on the page the bandwidth would also be affected. This is done by coding: <!- - insert your hidden comments here blah blah - - > into the HTML document. Instead of writing "insert your hidden comments here blah blah" coders will write a lot of stuff to recognize what goes on in the HTML coding. One can also hog bandwidth by displaying banners on the webpage or using detailed explanations of things. For example, typing "The little orange and white cat stuck his pink tongue out and licked up the soggy food." would take up much more bandwidth than typing "The cat ate food." If you are trying to avoid any illegal activity, be smart and do not perform and of these operations discussed above (Bad 1). I recently got a bandwidth violation at Penn State for downloading. Penn State’s download and upload limits are 1.5 gigabytes. 1.5 gigabytes equals 1,500,000,000 bytes of information. I got this violation for downloading movies. There is an estimate that a full length DVD movie totals 2.5 gigabytes (Making 4). That day I downloaded two movies. I went way above and beyond and hogged a lot of bandwidth, causing the system to slow down my connection from broadband to a 56K connection. That was as slow as a dial-up modem connection that most homes use. I got this violation because Penn State is only trying to protect me from any illegal activity that may be going on, and now I respect that. Bill Gates said in PC Magazine on October 11, 1994 that "We’ll have infinite bandwidth in a decade’s time."(Gilder 1) In the year 1994, MCI offered its customers fiber connections of 2.4 gigabytes per second. In 1995, the fiber connections processed at 10 gigabits per second. In 1996, the fiber connections could process 40 gigabits per second. Eventually, 10,000 wavelength streams will be sent down a single fiber thread (Gilder 2). More recent communications technologies that transported information by means of bandwidth were called the asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM. This keeps packets of information together and allows for quick reference. Each packet of information is known as a cell. Each cell can hold up to 53 bytes. This allows for silicon routing and switching at fast speeds through the ATM network. The ATM can accommodate voice, video and data. Also, some more recent additions to the bandwidth community are Sega and Nintendo game machines. These can "manage multimedia in full flood." (Gilder 2) Bandwidth has greatly improved means of communication. One mean of communication that bandwidth allows for is video conferencing. This is when two people are connected to the internet and frames are sent to the other person at the other end. Depending on how much bandwidth is available, the video conference could look like a slide show or an actual movie. Running a successful video conference means having good bandwidth, good latency and appearance (DeMaria 2). High bandwidth offers clear pictures and real life media (DeMaria 1) LAN/WAN lines usually offer more quality-of-service control and bandwidth control. Compared to the old video conferences which were blurry headshots and choppy audio, today’s technology allows for full-motion video capture: a high quality video session (DeMaria 2). Bandwidth allowed for easy transfer of music files. Today you hear about singers and songwriters losing out on money because of the constant transfer of music files from one computer to another eliminating album sales. This is believed to be "stealing" music, or music piracy. But it is really just like recording a video aster a show on TV and playing it back later over and over again. If the government can make music sharing illegal and sure children for playing a part in the music sharing, why aren’t they making it illegal to record movies and TV shows? Programs like Kazaa are being closely monitored and anyone who takes part of this "illegal" music sharing is vulnerable to any lawsuits. People are being encouraged to delete all music downloading programs online and to avoid sharing music. Especially with the prime season for music coming up, the months of September through December, triggers a release of many albums for music artists. The crackdown on music now is in hopes to improve sales again for the upcoming season. Bandwidth plays a key role in this issue because of the convenience it allows for music sharing: the broad range, the speed, and he quality. Finally, bandwidth will continue to grow and improve in range and quality even more everyday. People will continue to share music files as long as bandwidth continues to allow easy access. Bandwidth will improve many other things and continue to play a key role in technological advances. It is revolutionary, and our world incorporates it mire and more into our everyday lives. Everyone will be living by method of bandwidth and it will become a common day thing like brushing our teeth.
|