A clear understanding of critical data transmission metrics such as bandwidth and throughput can make all the difference in choosing the optimal storage layer for your apps and projects. From mitigating slow data transmission to optimizing operations, understanding data transmission metrics in today’s technology-dependent ecosystem is incredibly valuable for a cross-functional product, tech, and data teams. Further, considering key data transmission metrics such as bandwidth and throughput through the lens of the decentralized cloud, one will find that not all data transmission capabilities are equal. In fact, network performance in traditional point-to-point transfers is fundamentally limited compared to network performance inherent to a decentralized cloud storage model.
But, before we dig into the benefits of Storj DCS, let’s dig into some key concepts.
What Is Bandwidth?
Bandwidth is defined as the maximum transfer throughput capacity of a network.
In short, bandwidth tells you how much data could theoretically be transferred. It should be noted that bandwidth does not increase the speed of your network, only the amount of data that can flow through it at one time. While bandwidth may be related to the speed of your network, it is only a piece of the puzzle.
It’s important to know that increasing your bandwidth does not increase your packet speed. When you increase your bandwidth you are actually increasing the amount of data you can send at one time, not the transmission speed itself. You can have high bandwidth but have a slow packet speed due to suboptimal throughput.
Bandwidth TL;DR: Bandwidth shows how much data can theoretically be transferred at any given time.
What Is Throughput?
Throughput is defined as a measurement of how many packets arrive at their destination successfully. Packet arrival is essential for a healthy network. With packet loss comes a slow network. This can lead to laggy or distorted VoIP calls and weak network performance.
Keep in mind that you may be able to increase your throughput by reducing the processing time per piece of data being transmitted. This can be accomplished by reducing the number of operations performed on the data packet while transmitting.
Throughput TL;DR: Throughput shows how much data has actually been transferred from point A to point B.
Network Performance and Decentralized Cloud Storage
Storj DCS and the underlying parallelism it provides has a profound effect on data transmission times and capabilities.
As we know, when downloading a file in the traditional point-to-point transmission process, your file is sourced from a single location. By doing this, your transmission speeds are subject to the network characteristics of your environment and the connection you are transmitting data from.
When leveraging Storj DCS, you’ll benefit from data transmission parallelism. Here, the decentralized architecture grabs only the needed pieces of data required to perform your download request in parallel. Storj DCS encrypts, splits, and distributes your data across multiple Storage Nodes in more than 100 countries. Each of the 80 pieces is stored on different Storage Nodes with different ISPs, operators, power supplies, locations and is encrypted with AES-256-GCM encryption. Since your data is never in one place it is nearly impossible for it to be lost or affected by outages. See how it works.
Why is this valuable you might ask? Because this decentralized concept of storage allows data to be downloaded in parallel, it maximizes download efficiency. This cuts out any potential bottleneck, downtime, attack, or outage ensuring optimal data transmission.
The bottom line is that in almost any scenario, Storj DCS will never be the bottleneck for data transmission and your speed is gated only by your local compute and network resources. With Storj DCS, you minimize the risks of a centralized cloud storage system so you are able to have higher network performance - and peace of mind.
Ready To Improve Your Bandwidth and Throughput?
Through this piece, we hope you’re able to gain a better understanding of bandwidth and throughput through the lens of decentralized cloud storage. If you’re ready to explore storing and sharing data via the decentralized cloud, or simply want to test throughput and bandwidth capabilities when using Storj DCS, sign up for free and see firsthand the power that Storj delivers.
