Please, spread the word. As most of you know,
and to those that don't: you need a spanking, there is a
marked difference between the two.
Throughput is the amount of information (
pulses,
bits,
frames,
packets, etc...) that can be sent through a
conductor while it is under the
stresses of
real-life operation. These include
improper wiring (
crossed pair, anyone?),
EMF or
Magnetic Flux disturbances and
noise, the
Johnson's dog
digging up your backyard, or plain old-fashioned, good old
American collisions.
Bandwidth is the amount of information it is
physically possible to send through the
media of choice (
copper,
fiber, the
Johnson's dog). This is the number you get when you sit down with your trusty
TI-82 and the
impedence charts from
Physics and calculate out how many bits per second can be sent through a foot of copper/fiber/whatever.
The relationship can be roughly
described as Experimental vs Measured