What Is Upstream?
The word Upstream is a term used in computer networks to describe the direction of data transmission. In other words, it's the direction in which data travels from the local computer to a remote host. There are several forms of upstream communications, and they can be either wireless or wired. Wireless upstreams use radio frequencies (RF) to transmit data from your computer to an antenna on top of your house or office building wired upstreams use a cable connection between your computer and the Ethernet port on your router or modem. The speed at which data travels from one destination to another is bandwidth. Upstream. In data transfer, upstream is just the opposite of downstream, which refers to any data that can be sent from a server to a local machine. To understand upstream, you need to understand what's going on in an average data transfer. When you have to click on a link or open an email, your browser sends requests for content back and forth between your local machine and another device such as a server. This content could be anything—a video file, an image, text, or anything else that Can store can store on a computer—and may keep it on your computer or someone else's. Internet nodes are like people. Some are more popular than others, and others are more active on social media. And some are just really good at Snapchat. But when you're talking about Internet nodes, it's not about popularity or activity—it's about location. A node closer to the Internet backbone is said to be upstream of a node farther away from the spine. As in, "I'm going to upstream my data."Like you do when you're uploading a file to the cloud? It's not just for fish anymore!
Related Terms by Networking Solutions
Join Our Newsletter
Get weekly news, engaging articles, and career tips-all free!
By subscribing to our newsletter, you're cool with our terms and conditions and agree to our Privacy Policy.