Bandwidth
Technically, the term 'bandwidth' comes from the field of electrical engineering, where bandwidth represents the total distance or range between the highest and lowest signals on the communication channel, or the band. However we're going to use the term in it's commonly misused form while describing maximum bit rate or theoretical throughput of communication channel.
A regular analog modem transfers data at a maximum rate of 56,000 bits per second or 56Kbs. Some other technologies such as ISDN or DSL allow transfer rates of 128K, 256K and higher. An even faster cable modem could have a transfer rate of up to 9Mb/second.
In the chart below we show transfer rates of other technologies used in the communications industry.
| Copper (T carrier) | Fiber (Optical Carrier) |
| T1 = 1.544Mbps | OC-1 = 51.84Mbps |
| T2 = 6.312Mbps | OC-3 = 155Mbps |
| T3 = 44.736Mbps | OC-12 = 622Mbps |
| T4 = 274.176Mbps | OC-24 = 1.2Gbps |
| OC-48 = 2.4Gbps |
Our servers are connected, via a 100Mb Ethernet connection to two fully redundant layer 3 switches . Each connected to five unique tier 1 providers via a minimum of OC-3.
If converting between kilobits, megabits, and gigabits is making you crazy try our handy conversion calculator.