#195 - How fast is fast?

First of all some definitions. Broadband Internet is also called "High Speed" Internet access. The speed of Internet is defined now by MBPS or Megabits per second. There are two directions of Internet speed: Upload and Download. Download is almost always faster and that is the number that most Internet providers give when talking about speed.

Now some context. The first Internet access was done via dial up phone modems. Their maximum top upload speed was rated at 0.056 MBPS. High Speed Internet was originally defined to be greater then 0.256 MBPS. Now I would say High Speed starts at 1MBPS.

There are several competing technologies to provide Broadband Internet for your use. DSL (digital subscription line) is a technology used mainly by telephone companies to provide Broadband over their telephone wires. This is done by sending the Internet at a much higher frequency then voice telephone conversations. The top end download speed for copper wired DSL is about 6MBPS. The other major Broadband provider for your home or office is Cable. Again Cable Internet uses their existing cable lines in your home/business to provide high-speed Internet. The top end download speed for Cable Internet in the US is probably around 30MBPS. One other difference between DSL and Cable is DSL is a dedicated line to your place while Cable is a shared resource. Meaning DSL won't slow down if your neighbor also has it and is on line, but if you both have Cable the more on the system, the slower the Internet.

Two other newer technologies for Internet are Cell phone systems (the 3G & 4G networks) and Fibre Optic. Cell phone Internet is a wireless system that uses the cell phone towers to provide Interet. Existing 3G technology is capped at download speeds of 3.1MBPS. 4G is the newer technology and could possibly go as high as 100MBPS. That is POSSIBLY. Right now the new 4G networks max out around 6MBPS. Fibre Optic is the fastest of all technologies. Using light waves to sent the Internet over dedicated fibre cables, Fibre Optic Internet can now run as fast as 40MBPS.

In our area Shentel Cable provides up to 20MBPS over their Cable network and ntelos is matching them with Fibre Optic system at 20MBPS. We have 3G in all the towns but no 4G yet. ntelos is going to provide up to 6MBPS to all their wired customers.

So what is the importance of speed? If you want to watch seamless Internet videos (no jumps, skips, bumps) you need over 5MBPS download speed. Multitasking videos, surfing, cloud computing all requires 10MBPS. Just like we keep increasing and using more memory in PCs, we'll keep using more Internet speed.