Question 1

What's the difference between bandwidth and latency?

Accepted Answer

Bandwidth is how much data can be sent per second (capacity), like how many cars can fit on a highway at once. Latency is how long it takes a single piece of data to travel from sender to receiver (delay), like how long a car takes to get from point A to point B. You can have high bandwidth but still high latency (fast bulk transfer, but slow response time).

Question 2

How do I know if I need more bandwidth?

Accepted Answer

You likely need more bandwidth if you see buffering during streaming, slow downloads/uploads when multiple users are active, frequent timeouts during large transfers, or network interfaces consistently near their throughput limits. In cloud setups, check metrics like network throughput, packet drops, and load balancer/VPN/Direct Connect link utilization; if they’re regularly close to the maximum, increasing capacity or distributing traffic can help.

Question 3

How much does bandwidth cost in the cloud?

Accepted Answer

Costs usually depend on data transfer volume (GB/TB), direction (egress to the internet is commonly charged more than ingress), region, and the service used (VMs, load balancers, NAT gateways, CDNs, inter-region links). Many providers charge $0 for inbound data and charge for outbound internet egress; using a CDN can reduce origin egress by caching content closer to users. Always check the provider’s data transfer pricing for your region and architecture.

Bandwidth

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