“Bandwidth” refers to a measure of the bit rate of data communication resources, expressed in a number bits communicated per unit time. “Bandwidth throttling” may be used to reduce the speed at which data is communicated, for example to limit network congestion or to help prevent a web server from crashing.
A server administrator may set a bandwidth throttling parameter to limit the number of requests that the server responds to within a specified period of time. For example, the server may be configured to implement bandwidth throttling during periods of peak server use, to prevent the server from crashing while attempting to respond to a large number of data requests. When the bandwidth throttling parameter is exceeded, the server may queue additional data requests, or may delay processing the additional requests until bandwidth use reaches an acceptable level.