Never mind the connection speed, measure the connection consistency!

Knowing your Internet speed is slow without providing the means to help resolve the problem is of little value.
When discussing Internet connectivity problems the number one complaint is always about speed or the lack of it. End-users relay the same message over and over again, and quite frequently users with Internet service problems are quick to defend their choice of service provider with statements like “But I have a 5 Mbps or a 10 Mbps connection so I shouldn't have jerky video” or “But the speed tester I use says I can run 9 VoIP lines, so why are my VoIP calls often garbled?”
As speed is the prime criteria when users select an Internet service provider, when they are asked “what is the consistency of the service?”, the question is most often met with a puzzled expression along with the retort, “consistency! What do you mean by consistency?”
Speed versus consistency is a crucial issue for measuring bandwidth performance. An example of speed without consistency would be like driving a Ferrari during the heavily congested rush hour — while the capability of high speed exists, the speed is not realized due to other factors.
We all drive on highways and through experience we know only too well that our journey time will not be governed by the maximum speed of our car or the maximum speed of the highway. In reality it will be governed by the many different events that occur on our journey such as weather, congestion, accident backup or highway construction.
Running a speed test that shows a slow throughput without consideration of the event information to help the ISP to identify and resolve inherent performance issues has absolutely no value. Only through careful measurement of every aspect of the end-to-end journey can a speed test really start to benefit the user, and more importantly benefit the service provider by providing the information needed to identify the problem.
In the Internet world there are many different issues that affect how our applications perform. When performance is as we expect we are content, when it is not we get frustrated. Understanding the events that impact your Internet connection along with the consistency of service delivered for your applications is vitally important for the problems to be resolved. In our highway example, if the consistency of the highway service was to be measured by its users, it would be a measure of the highway’s ability to deliver you to your destination in a time that closely matches the time it would take if you were able to sustain the maximum allowed speed. In other words, assuming you are driving as fast as allowed by the legal limit, the calculation of highway consistency would be:

Highway consistency % = Your Speed/maximum allowed highway speed x 100

Slow Downloads and Connection to Content Servers

Is your download actually slow?

• Comparing Steam download speeds to your Internet connection speed:
  
  Internet and other network connection speeds are typically measured in multiples of bits per second. However, Steam downloads, like many other file downloads, are measured in multiples of bytes per second. A byte is a group of 8 bits.
  To compare your Steam download speed to your connection speed, multiply your Steam download speed by 8. For example, if you are getting 768KB/s (kilobytes per second) as your Steam download speed, you are getting 6144Kb/s (kilobits per second) or 6 megabits per second download speed according to most Internet service providers.
  Example download speed conversions
  
  

  Advertised Connection Speed	Est. Max Steam Download Speed
  3 megabits/second	384 KB/S
  5 megabits/second	640 KB/S
  15 megabits/second	1.9 MB/S
  20 megabits/second	2.5 MB/S
  30 megabits/second	3.75 MB/S
  50 megabits/second	6.25 MB/S

• What is your actual Internet connection speed?
  
  The speed displayed in your System Tray or network connection properties is typically the speed you are connected to your local area network (LAN) and does not represent the speed you are connected to the Internet at. Please refer to the materials for your connection plan or contact your Internet service provider (ISP) for information on your connection speed. You can also use one of the numerous speed testing sites available online such as SpeedTest or DSLReports to test your connection speed.
  

Your Broadband Company May Be Holding Your Internet Access Hostage

One of the biggest Internet backbone companies in the world, Level 3, claimed this week that five of the major American consumer broadband providers have been abusing their near-monopoly access to American homes and offices to pad their profits, raise consumer costs and delay enhancements to the high speed lines.
The charge comes just as Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are considering a merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable that would make the new company the largest broadband provider in the country.
The big broadband providers “are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers,” writes Mark Taylor, Level 3′s VP of Content and Media, in a blog post on Monday, who argued that their near-monopoly in local markets was the main factor allowing them to get away with it. “They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content.”
While Taylor did not name the Internet Service Providers at issue in his post, he dropped some hints. “Five of those congested peers are in the United States and one is in Europe,” he writes. “There are none in any other part of the world. All six are large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market. In countries or markets where consumers have multiple Broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers.”

How Can I Make Sure I'm Getting the Download Speeds I'm Paying For?

As I understand it, most internet service plans require you to pay for specific upload and download speeds. How can I ensure my internet provider is delivering on the speeds I'm paying for?

Sincerely,
Double Downloading

Dear DD,

Great (and timely) question, and one I'm sure we're all thinking a little bit about now that Google Fiber's insanely fast internet has us all a little jealous. Just last week the FCC revealed that most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) usually meet their advertised speed rates. Of course, just because most ISPs are delivering what they're advertising doesn't mean yours is. The basic process to test your download speeds is something anyone can do. The first step: we need to verify how much you're actually paying for.

Find Out the Speed You're Paying For

The first thing to do is check in with your ISP and see what speed you're paying for (if you don't already

How fast should my Internet connection be to watch streaming HD movies?

Netflix recommends a minimum Internet connection speed of 500kbps if you want to stream movies.

Image courtesy of Netflix

If you checked a dozen different video streaming information Web sites, you'd probably get 12 different suggestions as to how fast your Internet download speed needs to be to watch high definition (HD) video. So what's the correct speed? Let's take a look at the data out there and discover a little more about how your Internet speed relates to streaming HD movies.
First, consider what it means for video to be HD. For a single still image on your screen, high definition refers to having at least 720 lines of pixels on the screen, from top to bottom, making up the image. The upper end of HD is 1,080 lines of pixels. The more pixels you can cram into the same physical space, the more detailed an image you can see on the screen. That increased detail means higher definition.

How fast is my broadband? A guide to upload speed, download speed and how to check it

Were you looking for our home broadband speed test or mobile broadband speed test?
Alongside price, speed is one of the key factors people talk about when it comes to choosing broadband. All of the internet service providers (ISPs) quote the broadband download speed as a key part of their advertising. And then there are upload speeds, megabits and speed tests - but what does it all mean?

Megabits and megabytes

Broadband speed is measured in megabits per second, commonly written as Mb or Mbps (as in 24Mb, or 24Mbps). Make sure you don't get confused between megabits and megabytes (which tends to be written as MB, or GB when referring to gigabytes) - these terms denote memory capacity, not speed.
There are eight bits in a byte, so, if your download speed is eight megabits per second (8Mb), then that's actually shifting 1 megabyte per second (1MB).
It's an important distinction, because file sizes (such as songs, pictures and movie clips) are described in megabytes, as are download allowances. So to recap; its megabits per second (Mb) when talking about broadband speed, and megabytes (MB) - or gigabytes (GB) for large files - when talking about file sizes and download caps.
You may also come across Kb and KB - kilobits and kilobytes - there are 1,024KB in a MB, and 1,024MB in a GB - the same goes for Kb/Mb/Gb. In today's terms though, these are tiny files or very slow speeds!

Download speed

When you connect to the internet, the download speed is the pace at which data (websites, programmes, music etc) is transferred from another source to your device.

Currently, when it comes to home broadband, advertised download speeds range from 8Mb to over 100Mb, but this is rising at a pretty quick rate - you can expect a broadband download speed of between 120Mb and 200Mb to become commonplace in the next few years.
Pretty impressive, as a 2Mb download speed was the common UK standard just a few years ago.
However, broadband download speed doesn't have to be a big factor in your decision on which broadband deal to choose. If you're simply going to be leisurely checking your email and surfing around a few web pages, the slowest packages available through Broadband Genie will comfortably suffice.
That said, if you're going to be sharing the connection between a lot of simultaneous connections, downloading a lot of files, especially large ones, gaming, or listening and watching a lot of streamed content (watching the likes of BBC iPlayer, especially in HD) it will be more of a concern.
A slow internet download speed can become very annoying if your downloads take forever and the video clip you're trying to watch keeps stalling. As a general rule, if you're going to rely on downloading a lot of content, or play a lot of online games, it is definitely worth looking at getting the fastest connection you can comfortably budget for.

How to Maximize the Speed of Your Internet Connection

Are web pages taking longer to load than they used to? Are your download speeds not matching the speed you should be getting? There are a lot of factors involved when it comes to your internet connection. Luckily there's a lot you can do to try to improve your performance, and you could see improvements in just a few minutes.

Part 1 of 3: Checking Your Hardware, Network and Connection

1. • Run a speed test. Before you get down and dirty with your hardware and computer settings, check to see what kind of speeds you are getting and compare that to the advertised speeds for your service. There are a variety of speed test sites on the net, just search for "speed test" in Google and pick the top few results.
   • Different tests will give you different results. Even the same test may give you different results between tests. This is due to the location of test servers and the number of people sharing your connection.
   • Take multiple tests and find the average speed you are getting.
   • You may need to download plugins in order to run the tests.
   • If given the option, pick the test server closest to your physical location. This will help get you the most accurate results.
2. • Compare your results against what you're paying for. Check with your service provider to see what speeds you "should" be getting. Keep in mind that speeds advertised by your provider are "best case" speeds, and you may not be able to actually get that number on a regular basis.
   • If you haven't upgraded your internet in a long time, you may be able to get better speeds for less money. Companies aren't usually keen to inform you of better deals, so check to see if new services are available that weren't when you signed up. Check with all the providers in your area.
   • Be aware of the megabyte/megabit difference. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) advertise in megabits, not megabytes. There are 8 megabits (Mb) in a megabyte (MB), so if you are paying for 25 megabits per second (Mbps), then that's just over 3 megabytes per second (MBps) of actual maximum transfer speed.