Throughput

Throughput is a measure of communications capability, and refers to the amount of data that can be "put through" a connection in a given period of time. Throughput is a measure of actual performance, rather than a theoretical maximum for the medium involved. Modem specifications commonly include not only the standard bits/per second rating, but a rating for actual throughput using data compression.

URLs:

SLIP vs PPP Performance Comparison

A comparison of SLIP and PPP throughput.

rfc 896: Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks

A study of throughput problems with IP/TCP

W3E References:

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is a theoretical maximum capacity of a communications medium.