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Let’s easily understand Internet bandwidth, speed, upload and download in our homes or businesses.
Sometimes I compare internet bandwidth, speeds, and upload and download capacities using the following analogy:
Imagine you have to move house and you’re going to hire a transport service to carry your belongings. You have options to hire small or large trucks (bandwidth), you can tell the driver the maximum speed at which they should drive (transfer rate) and the route to take (transmission medium).
Following the previous analogy, the size of the truck allows you to move a larger quantity of belongings, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will go faster. This is how bandwidth operates, it allows you to send a larger PowerPoint, a bigger video, download more music, however; it doesn’t necessarily allow you to transfer that amount of information as fast as you expect. What really defines this is called transfer rate, it’s like the speed in kilometers per hour that the truck you hired can travel. It’s the real speed you can achieve and this, in terms of information, is measured in Mbps. (Megabits per second)
Most Internet providers offer capacities from 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or more of bandwidth (it’s the maximum load capacity of your truck), but this doesn’t mean you’ll actually have the guaranteed capacity to transfer your data at the highest contracted speed, at least not all the time, as there are other factors that can affect it, for example:
The transmission medium is like the route your truck will take. If the road is in poor condition, it will take longer. In my experience, coaxial cable, the round black cable used by cable companies to connect your internet, is slower than fiber optic and is often affected by environmental conditions and the distances over which it has been installed, contrary to my experience using fiber optic. To explain it better, fiber optic is a light conductor, so imagine the speed of each data transmission.
On the other hand, the number of devices I have connected to my network is like the number of vehicles our moving truck will encounter on its route to the new destination. They all share the same route, possibly affecting the speed because there can be traffic jams, that is, the same transmission medium, the same bandwidth, therefore, we must take into account how many devices we are going to connect to the home or office network. (computers, cell phones, iPads, TVs, among others).
Finally, the upload and download of internet bandwidth data is comparable to the large truck you loaded your things into to unload at your new home, except that on the return trip you send a smaller truck to carry the empty boxes, which will take them to your previous home, so that they can pack more things that you will bring back again in a large truck. This is why we take less time downloading files from the Internet than uploading them.
A different case in our offices is that sometimes we have equal speed (symmetrical) for both upload and download, only that for this the company pays much more than we normally pay in our homes.
Some considerations when acquiring Internet
• In my experience, I recommend today, in the year 2021, to reserve at least 5 Mbps for each TV and 25 Mbps for each TV that plays 4K, for each player of Call of Duty 4 Mbps (example), for each person who plays Zoom 4 Mbps and try to leave about 50 Mbps usable for update downloads, cell phone connections and other applications; it’s possible that you don’t use everything at once, but keep in mind that in the past we only connected computers to the home or office network, today each cell phone works like a computer, which downloads, plays videos, music or video games, this without counting closed security circuits, among others.
• Use fiber optic if possible.
• Use 5G wireless networks only when you are close to the antenna that transmits that signal, although these networks are faster, their signal is not as powerful as the 2.4 which are slower.
• In most cases, the speed of your private network, home or office is different from the one contracted with the provider, so don’t expect to have the same speed. We have clients who contract 200 Mbps, but use technologies in their local (private) network that transmit at a maximum of 100 Mbps (it’s like renting a large truck to only load it halfway), although in most cases our local network is up to ten (10) times faster than the one contracted for our Internet.
• When the cellular provider offers you 1GB downloads, it doesn’t mean you have 1GB of bandwidth, it means they will allow you to download only 1GB of data (you consume this between two and three movies on Netflix) so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have 1GB of bandwidth. I advise you to request your monthly consumption report, so you’ll know how much you’re requiring.
• If you want to measure the Internet speed provided by your telecommunications provider, connect your computer directly with a cable to the modem and make sure it’s disconnected from the wireless network, then run a speed test from those you’ll find on the Internet or recommended by the provider itself. If your device doesn’t have a network cable adapter, connect wirelessly by positioning yourself next to the modem. While this latter alternative might not be as precise, you’re more likely to receive higher speed close to the modem than far from it.
If you want to conduct a more precise evaluation of the bandwidth required in your organization, we’d be happy to help. We have telecommunications engineers who have the necessary equipment to perform the appropriate calculations for your organization.
