speed Matters

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by a fast-talking salesperson only to be left underwhelmed by the actual product, then you know how important it is to do your research. When it comes to internet speeds, there is a lot of talk happening these days and it’s likely to include some confusing or misleading terms. From Megabits per second to the connection between pings and latency, we are here to break it down into digestible bytes so you can ask the right questions to your current or prospective Internet Service Provider.

Broadband Standards

You might not be surprised to learn that not everyone can agree on internet speed standards. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently defines broadband (including any technology that provides high-speed access to the internet) as 25 download / 3 upload Mbps. This standard was set in 2015, but they are considering increasing this to 100/20 Mbps. The State of Pennsylvania is currently much lower at 1.544 Mbps download and 128 Kbps upload. But what does it all mean? A bit is a binary digit that is either 1 or 0 that your computer uses to perform all of its calculations and to send data. A kilobit is 1,000 bits of data while a megabit is one million, or one thousand kilobits. 

Speed is measured as Mbps or megabits per second. Download speed is the basic number most people think of first, as this measures how long it takes your device to access data from the internet, but upload speeds are becoming more important when using video conferencing or sharing your data out to other people. The following table shows approximate download speeds along with how many people are expected to be able to use the connection simultaneously. 

While speed is the maximum rate for uploading or downloading a set amount of data, Bandwidth measures how much data can be sent over a set time. This number is impacted by how many other people are using the connection at a given time. Latency is the other major factor affecting your speed, sometimes referred to as lag. When data is sent over the internet, it doesn’t always follow a straight path. There are often a number of stops along the way, called hops. Your data travels from your computer to your router to the local distribution center to wider networks to the end user and has to come all the way back. Each point of change is a chance for errors. As these errors or delays pile up, we call it latency and it can cause your streaming service to skip or freeze. Latency is often measured with a ping. The following table shows how latency impacts your connection:

Latency? More like wait and see, amiright?

The next time you speak with an internet salesperson, you will be the one who talks FAST! And this guide can help you measure apples to apples and bits to bytes. By the way, it should be mentioned that there are exactly eight bits in a byte! Be sure not to mix up megabits with megabytes, which are eight times larger too.

Thanks to our partners at XLab, you can now test your internet speed. Visit bringtheweb.org/speed-test to see how your connection stacks up.