Let’s easily understand Internet bandwidth, speed, upload, and download in our homes or businesses.
I sometimes compare internet bandwidth, speeds, and upload and download capabilities using the following analogy:
Imagine you have to move house and are going to hire a transport service to carry your belongings. You have the option of hiring small trucks 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 greater quantity of belongings, but this does not necessarily mean that it will go faster. This is how bandwidth operates. It allows you to send a larger PowerPoint, a larger video, download more music; however, it does not necessarily allow you to transfer that amount of information as quickly as you expect. What really defines this is called transfer rate, which is like the speed in kilometers per hour that the truck you hired can travel. It is the actual speed you can reach, and this is measured in Mbps. (Megabits per second)
Most Internet providers offer capacities from 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps or more of bandwidth (it is the maximum load capacity of your truck), but this does not mean that you will really have the guaranteed capacity to transfer your data at the highest contracted speed, at least not all the time, since there are other factors that can affect it, for example:
The transmission medium is like the route your truck will take. If the street is in poor condition, it will take longer. In my experience, the coaxial cable, the black round cable that cable companies use to connect your internet, is slower than fiber optics and is often affected by environmental conditions and distances in which it has been installed, contrary to my experience using fiber optics. To explain it better, fiber optics is a conductor of light, so imagine the speed of each data transmission.
On the other hand, the number of devices that I have connected to my network is like the number of vehicles that our moving truck will find on its route to the new destination. Everyone shares the same route, possibly this will affect the speed because there may be bottlenecks, 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 data from the internet bandwidth is comparable to the large truck in which you loaded your things to unload at your new home, only on the way back you send a smaller truck to take the empty boxes, which will take them to your previous home, so that with these boxes they pack more things that you will bring again in a large truck. For this reason, we take less time downloading files from the Internet than uploading them.
Unlike our offices, we sometimes have an equal (symmetric) speed of both upload and download, only 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, reserving a minimum of 5 Mbps for each TV and 25 Mbps for each TV that plays 4K, for each Call of Duty player 4 Mbps (example), for each person who plays Zoom 4 Mbps and try to leave about 50 Mbps usable for downloading updates, cell phone connections and other applications; you may not 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 plays video games, this without counting closed security circuits, among others.
• If possible, use fiber optics.
• 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 ones, which are of lower speed.
• In most cases, the speed of your private network, home or office is different from that contracted by the provider, do not expect to have the same speed. We have clients who contract 200 Mbps, but use technologies in their local (private) network that transmits a maximum of 100 Mbps (it is 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 that contracted for our Internet.
• When the cell phone provider offers you 1GB downloads, it does not mean that you have 1GB of bandwidth, it means that it will allow you to download only 1GB of data (you consume it between two and three movies on Netflix) so do not fall into the trap thinking that you have a bandwidth of 1 GB, I advise you to ask for your monthly consumption report, so you will know how much you are 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 is disconnected from the wireless network, then run a speed test of those you will find on the Internet or recommended by the same provider, in case your equipment does not have a network cable adapter, connect wirelessly by placing yourself next to the modem, although this last alternative may not be so accurate, it is more likely to receive higher speed near the modem than far from it.
If you want to perform a more accurate evaluation of the bandwidth to be required in your organization, we will gladly help you. We have telecommunications engineers who have the necessary equipment to perform the appropriate calculations for your organization.
