So, what does average siteowner need to know about bandwidth?Absolutely nothing!......... If you have enough of it.
Bandwidth refers to amount of data transfer per second.
Its standard unit is
kilo bits per second. In a somewhat larger scale, it can be called
Mega bits per second ( in order of one million bits/sec. or ten to power of six ) Giga bits per second (in order of one thosand million bits per second, or ten to power of nine )
The slowest part or section of a route will limit previous and post transmission speeds to that mamimum. In other words, you can typically have a few thousand miles of fibre optic cable, capable of high speed, and then be limited by a slower section of copper wire. Likewise for a high tech network and a dial up modem. These variables are considered when working out "throughput" value.
Wire less( whether infra-red or radio transmission) cannot compare to bandwidth provided by fibre optic. Similarly for copper conductors. This is primarily due to their respective, physical properties.
Theoretically, nothing is faster than light though particle accelerators come near, but that is another matter, lol. Sticking with bandwidth though - most people are currently stuck with copper somewhere along line.
For a hosting plan, bandwidth has importance to ambitious, as well as successful. If a web page is downloaded often (successful), then bandwidth exceeding its number of kilobites multiplied by number of downloads at a given time must be considered. This is without any other pages that may be on site.
If a product or application (whether free, or not) has to be facilitated for download, then bandwidth must increase.