Is it called bandwidth or data?

[Tristan]

Here's an analogy for bandwidth:
Data is to available bandwidth as water is to the size of the pipe. In other words, as the bandwidth increases, so does the amount of data that can flow through in a given amount of time, just like as the size of the pipe increases, so does the amount of water that can flow through during a period of time.

Or: Think of bandwidth like a freeway. All cars (data) travel at the same speed, so to get more data from the internet to your computer faster, the freeway needs to be wider.

In other words, say 1 Mbps is the equivalent to a 1 lane freeway. And let’s say that you were trying to download an image, which is 5 Mb in size. So if you had a bandwidth of 1 Mbps (1 lane freeway) it would take you roughly 5 seconds to download the image.

Now let’s say that you have a 5 Mbps (bandwidth) connection, or a 5 lane freeway. How fast will you receive your image? 1 second.

Data: is the Amount of Gigabytes you have for a certain amount of time.
Here are some things that you do on the internet and how much bandwidth (and data) it uses up:

1 Web Page – 1 MB
1 Text Email – .97 MB
10 Min YouTube Video – 43 MB
Download 1 Image – 2.5 MB
30 Min of Gaming – 2.5 MB

Go to this website for more information: http://www.plugthingsin.com/internet/guide/speed/