How to Understand High-Speed Internet

High-speed Internet usage has been progressively increasing, with BroadbandInfo.com reporting sharp increases in high-speed access during the last five years. Additionally, in a document released on June 3, 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that its most recent data revealed 82 percent of households with Internet access had a high-speed connection. This is good news for many web junkies, but some are disappointed to find that even high-speed Internet can be slow in many circumstances. There is more to ensuring the fastest, truly "high-speed" connection than simply purchasing a fast Internet service. Many factors go into making a high-speed connection as fast as possible.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Understand the terminology. Internet speed can be expressed as transfer speed, given in bytes per second, also called "Bps." A higher Bps means that the connection is faster. Commonly, high-speed Internet bytes are given in "mega" and "giga" equivalents---1,000 megabytes is equal to 1 gigabyte. So, while 500MBps sounds impressive, 1GBps will be much faster.

2. Realize that there are two speed ratings to consider. While a DSL or cable Internet provider might advertise high-speed Internet transfer rated at the high megabyte or low gigabyte per second ranges, if your computer's modem has a low transfer rate of only a few MBps, then you'll be limited to the slower connection of your modem.

3. Know that an ideal high-speed Internet provider will be centrally located or have a hub station in the area. If not, you can expect a slight decrease in speed because of the added distance. Additionally, latency may become an issue when there are great distances between your computer and the provider. Latency is a signal delay based on the time it takes for a signal to travel. Digital Landing explains that latency is mainly a concern for satellite-based high-speed Internet, but it can also have a modest effect on landline high-speed Internet.

4. Expect varied performance based on individual website traffic. Even with a fast connection, a good modem and close proximity to your provider's hub, certain websites might run slowly if they are congested from over-trafficking. If there are too many users trying to log on to the same site, the site's speed will slow down significantly.

References

• Broadband Info: "International Broadband Usage Statistics."
• US Census Bureau News, "Internet Use Triples in Decade."
• Digital Landing, "Understanding High-Speed Internet Satellite Access," by David Haskin.

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