How this for perspective.
Let's say you build a network in your home with Windows 98, and a couple of computers.
That network, most likely, will move data along the wires between the computers (and the hub) at 10 Mb/sec. Roughly speaking, that network can move 1,000,000 bytes (8 bits = 1 byte)of information in 1 second.
1,000,000 bytes of information is again, roughly speaking, 1,000,000 characters. Here are 10 characters: A12#84Gjroz. So....it can move 100,000 of these 10 character pack in 1 second.
Now....some of us have moved our home networks up to 100 Mb/sec because we've wired our homes with CAT-5, or better cabling.
Now with a 100 Mb/sec network, you can move 10,000,000 characters in 1 second, up from 1,000,000.
Home networks can't go faster that this yet, but backbones do, and other corporate enterprise nets do so. Moving to 2.5 Gb/sec, you can move that to 250 million characters a second!
Pretty fast, considering the average home net move only 1,000,000/second.
Hope that helps.
Steve
PS: For all the software engineers and computer scientists: I didn't want to complicated the math by telling the readers about the "1024" vs "1000" stuff....the math is easier using 1000. Hence...my term "roughly speaking". |
