Bandwidth Calculations

shuzaimi · ‎04-15-2009

Hi all,

Lets say I have a 10Mbps link to my upstream and I want to know why isn't the bandwidth calculated as 20Mbps as I have 10Mbps for download and 10Mbps for upload. Isn't 10+10 = 20?

Hope someone would be kind enough to clarify this for me.

Thanks a million.

Richard Burts · ‎04-16-2009

Assuming that the link does operate in full duplex, some people would do the math as you suggest and would say that the capacity of the link is 20 Mbps. Most of us agree that the convention that we describe bandwidth as the capacity in a single direction makes good sense and use the term in that way.

HTH

Rick

HTH

Rick

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎05-02-2009

Although duplex links can provide 2x nomimal "bandwidth", we (excluding marketing) normally just use single direction bandwidth numbers. Reason, I think, if you need to transfer data from one host to another, the data transfer bandwidth usage is mostly in just one direction. (Although for protocols such as TCP, there's also return bandwidth usage for ACKs, but that's much, much less.)