In PC networking as well as computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or else presently bandwidth is a quantify of accessible or else devoted data communication resources uttered in bit/s or else multiples of it (kbit/s, Mbit/s etc).

Bandwidth might pass on to bandwidth capability or else accessible bandwidth in bit/s, which normally means the net bit rate, channel capacity or else the utmost throughput of a logical or else physical communication path in a digital communication system. Such as, bandwidth test entails measuring the utmost output of a computer network. The basis for this procedure is that according to Hartley's law, the highest data rate of a physical communication link is relative to its bandwidth in hertz, which is at times called frequency bandwidth, radio bandwidth or else analog bandwidth, the last mainly in PC networking literature.

Bandwidth can also pass on to captivated bandwidth (bandwidth utilization), corresponding to accomplished throughput or else goodput, i.e. average data rate of booming data transmit through a communication path. This meaning is for instance used in expressions for example bandwidth shaping, bandwidth management, bandwidth throttling, bandwidth cap, bandwidth allocation (such as bandwidth allocation protocol as well as dynamic bandwidth allocation), etc. A clarification to this procedure is that digital bandwidth of a bit stream is comparative to the average utilized signal bandwidth in Hertz (the average spectral bandwidth of the analog signal representing the bit stream) throughout a studied time interval.

Digital bandwidth can also refer to: average bitrate (ABR) after multimedia data compression (source coding), which are being distinct as the total quantity of data separated by the playback time.

Various authors wish less indefinite terms for example gross bit rate, net bit rate, channel capacity as well as throughput, to keep away from misunderstanding among digital bandwidth in bits per second as well as analog bandwidth in hertz.