| Machines on the Internet are connected to each other through a network of some kind. |  |
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Most of the computers are connected by physical cables such as copper cable or perhaps optical fibre.` |
| However there are alternatives which are becoming more popular such as wireless, microwave or even laser. |  |
No matter what the method used, it is the bandwidth of
the communication channels that determines how much data travels over
any given time.
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If your computer is connected to a remote server somewhere, what determines the maximum speed of data transfer is the part of the connection that has the lowest bandwidth - this becomes the bottleneck.
Quite often the bottleneck is the "last mile" between your house and the local telephone exchange. This is because the connection is making use of plain old telephone wires that were originally designed to only carry voice signals.
Therefore 'bandwidth' determines the overall performance limit of a network
