When is fast, fast enough? In the world of high-speed data (HSD) or Internet access, the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are always touting they are the fastest. So how do you tell what is what?
First of all, let’s discuss what the numbers mean. In just about all services now days, the downstream (towards the consumer) and upstream (towards the ISP) are not the same. There are two numbers (e.g. 5 mbps down and 384 kbps up) to fully describe what speed you are getting. As in the example the numbers are given in “mbps” which stands for mega-bits per second or “kbps” which is kilo-bits per second. Kilo is 1,000 (thousand), mega is 1,000,000 (million) and giga is 1,000,000,000 (billion). The units for the speed are normally a lower case “b” which stands for “bit”. That is not same as a “byte” (usually indicated with a capital “B”. A byte is equal to 8 bits. Since the ISP’s are trying to show they are the fastest, they will almost always show bits. In most residential uses, the download direction is the one that matters. Upstream speeds are more important for businesses that have servers sending out information to their customers.
All service providers provide speeds which have the statement “up to X bps”. The reason for this is the technology being used to transmit the data is based upon a technology which uses a contention based protocol. In layman terms, this means that all users on the same network are trying to use the same transmission path at the same time and therefore, contention occurs. A graphical way of thinking about this is with a big water pipe. There are many people tapping onto the big water pipe with smaller pipes. The large pipe has a limit on how much water it can carry. When each of the small pipes takes or pumps in water, they take or fill up the water in the big pipe. If at point you (a small pipe) are trying to use your pipe and few others are using their pipes, you will get all that you need. If a lot of people happen to be using their pipe at the same time you are, you may not get all that you want. This is inherent to the Internet, so don’t be confused by claims that you will have dedicated bandwidth to the Internet. That maybe true for a small segment of the connection but the general public Internet is always shared. In other words, speeds quoted by ISP’s will usually be an “up to” amount.
Another factor which determines how fast your Internet experience will be is a term called “latency”. In this case, latency is the delay or time it takes to communicate with another site. The factors which determine what the latency is are: distance (data flows at the speed of light) and number of intermediary equipment (e.g. routers, servers) it passes to get to the final destination. The farther away the ending destination is from you, the larger the latency will be. The more equipment the data passes through the larger the latency will be. So why does this matter? Data is sent though the Internet in packets which are groups of bits. Each packet needs to be processed separately through the network and so the total latency is a multiple of the number of packets required to get you the information you requested. Therefore, when you browse to a page on a Mainland website, it’s going to be slower than a website in Hawaii and probably faster than one in Europe.
If you have some kind of Internet access service, how do you know what speed you are getting? There are special websites called speed test sites which help you determine your actual speeds. Two popular ones are www.speedtest.net and www.dslreports.com/stest/. You can go on to these website and run the little Java applets (web page programs) that measure the time it takes to download and upload a file of a known size. From these times, the speeds are calculated. However, as I explained above, the speed you get from the test depends upon the time you do the test and where the test server is located. The farther away the server is, the slower the speeds will be. To eliminate in the test the issues due to the distance and latency of servers on the Mainland, Oceanic created its own speed test server. You can reach that server at speedtest.oceanic.com/. If you have Road Runner, this will show the speed you are getting from the part of the Internet that Oceanic Time Warner Cable controls. Remember that the Internet is a conglomeration of thousands of networks owned and controlled by many different companies and organizations. So your connection speed is determined by the slowest link from you to the destination you request something from.
Recently, PC Magazine published the results of a test they did with thousands of readers across the country. The tester would download a program to their computer and it would contact different popular websites and measure the times. From those times, the average speed was calculated. The test contacted servers in the continental United States and consequently Alaska and Hawaii were the slowest States due to distance.
So now that you know how to find the numbers and what they mean, let us talking about what you could be requesting on the Internet. Typically you are using a web browser and surfing websites. Most websites are relatively small in size (usually 100kB or less) and therefore download in a second or two. However, with fancy animation and video, the web pages are increasing in size. If you have a HSD connection, a page usually time to load will still be acceptable. However, if you still are on dial-up or some older wireless devices, the experience is now getting unusable. Stepping up from web pages you my want to download a large file such as one of the following (on a service with 3 mbps average speed):
High Resolution digital photo: 2-5 mega-bytes = 16-40 mega-bits; 5-14 seconds
Digital audio music file (MP3): 3-5 mega-bytes = 24-40 mega-bits; 8-14 seconds
Low resolution video file: 5-9 mega-bytes = 40-72 mega-bits; 14-24 seconds
Encyclopedia Britannica: 2.7 giga-bytes = 21,600 mega-bits; 2 hours
DVD quality full length movie: 4-7 giga-bytes = 32,000-56,000 mega-bits; 3-5 hours
In the consumer Internet access market, Road Runner and DSL have been offering their service for years. In last couple years, a few wireless alternatives have come about (EVDO, WiMax) but they are usually slower than the stationary services. Both Road Runner and DSL have now multiple tiers of service. At press time, these are the current offering’s maximum download speeds available:
Road Runner/Turbo: 5.0mbps, 8.0mbps, 15 mbps
DSL: 3.0mbps, 7.0mbps, 11.0mbps
Clearwire: 2.0mbps
Sprint EVDO (Rev A): 1.4mbps
Verizon Wireless EVDO: 400kbps
The above services are only available in certain areas and so it’s important to find out whether it is available where you want it to be at the speed you want it at. DSL speed is dependant on the distance from where their network equipment. The higher the speed used, the shorter the distance limit is. Wireless is usually where available where a clear view of their antennas.
So now that you have all of this information, when is fast, fast enough? Depending on what you want to do and how often, you can select from the available ISP’s. Then you can look at the prices and other bundled features and service to make your final decision of is best for you.
