How is connection speed measured

Accessing the Internet is similar to traveling on the roads; there are times where it will be congested and the journey time will take longer, but conversely, there are times where there is very little traffic and you reach your destination faster.

During the early hours of the morning, Internet speeds are generally faster as fewer people are using it. Enter the evening and internet speeds will be at their worst; many people are at home after returning from work and start browsing the Internet.

Internet speeds can drop by almost half when tested in the evening compared to the early hours of the morning; the worst times to be accessing the Internet when you receive the slowest speeds will be between 7 pm and 10 pm. If you are running speed tests, be sure to run several throughout the course of the day as I suspect you will see quite a substantial difference.

Download speed measures how fast data is able to travel from the Internet into your home network and to your device, whereas upload speed measures the opposite; the speed in which data is able to travel out of your network and to the Internet. Here are some common activities you will be performing on a regular basis but perhaps not know that download and upload speeds are influencing. When comparing the internet speeds that different ISPs offer, most people will find the download speed to be more important than the upload speed as they spend more time downloading information than uploading it.

Most broadband packages will offer much faster download speeds than upload speeds. Notice how the upload speeds I receive are considerably slower than my download speeds:.

My upload speeds are almost five times slower than my download speeds. If it were to take my 30 minutes to download a file from the Internet, it would take me almost two and a half hours to upload the same file.

Up until recently, not many people have been too concerned about upload speeds; they just needed a fast download speed. The popularity of cloud-based storage solutions such as Google Drive, Dropbox or iCloud has increased the demand from faster upload speeds as of recently, though.

The faster fiber packages these days will offer significantly faster upload speeds in addition to faster download speeds. We are seeing the gap between download and upload speeds decreasing which is great for those of you looking to use the Internet for transferring large files. What you consider to be good or bad Internet speeds really comes down to what you are looking to use your Internet connection for.

Ask yourself the following questions to help you determine what download and upload speeds will be best for you:. Opting for a high-speed Internet connection comes with a host of benefits, including:. Here is a helpful chart to provide estimates on the download speeds you will need to perform certain tasks and activities. This is assuming you are the only one using the Internet at a time, so if you have multiple users you will need to account for the extra bandwidth.

There are several easy-to-use online Internet speed testers that will give you an idea of your download and upload speeds within seconds. The one I personally use and recommend is Speedtest.

I have a dedicated article on how to test home network speed in which we look at what is actually being tested when running a speed test, how to best prepare your home network for the test, how to perform the speed test itself, and what to do if the results are not what you expect.

You are able to complain to your Internet service provider if the speeds you are receiving are considerably slower than what they estimated when you signed up with them. They can give you advice on how to increase your speeds, but of course, there is a limit to this. Record the speeds you are receiving, making a note of the date and time of day that you are running the tests.

This way you will have a record of the speeds you have received over time and how long the issue has been persisting for. Your ISP is more likely to help you if they can see you have made an effort to monitor the issue and provide some useful data for them.

Be persistent with your ISP. This is a disclaimer to say this is the absolute fastest speed you are capable of receiving, but this may not necessarily be what you actually receive all of the time.

Many fiber customers have found speeds below the maximum possible speeds quoted as a result of network capacity, usage, and other factors. This really comes down to what you are using the Internet for, but most people will find the download speed more important. ISPs will generally offer similar speeds; the access method and your location are the more influential factors when it comes to Internet speeds. You may want to consider changing your access method instead, such as upgrading to fiber from ADSL.

More: Top skills for Alexa: 6 tips for your Amazon Echo that will simplify your life. Here is a list of the most popular sites to use. Your mileage may vary. One of the most well-known internet speed test services available is Ookla Speedtest.

As for download and upload speeds, measurements are given in bits per second. Higher numbers are better. Download speeds will typically be much faster than upload speeds. You can also compare these numbers against the speeds that your internet service provider promises you. Be sure to run multiple tests over several days at different times.

This will give you an overall picture of your connection speed. More: What you need to know about Google's personalized ads and how to turn them off. Just point your web-based or mobile browser to Fast. This will show your latency, upload speeds and the servers used for the test. Another excellent web-based speed test is SpeedOf. Other alternative speed tests can be accessed straight on the search engine of your choice. Kilobits per second. A kilobit is 1, bits of information.

This older measure of internet speed is only used when needed to describe slower connections. Not to be confused with kilobytes KB which is a measure of size rather than bandwidth. Download speed How quickly you can pull data from a server on the internet to your device. Upload speed How quickly you send data from your device to the internet. Latency or Ping Latency or Ping is the reaction time of your connection-how quickly your device gets a response after you've sent out a request.

Packet loss Packet loss occurs when a packet of data being sent over the internet is not received or is incomplete. Mbps Megabits per second.