Data services are generally defined by four different indicators: type, price, data allowance and speed. Today we’ll take a look at speed, which controls what you can do on the internet and how many people can use the same service at once.

The facts

Speed is measured in kilobits, megabits, or gigabits per second (Kbps, Mbps and Gbps, respectively). Kilobits were generally used to describe dial-up connections or the first types of ADSL. You won’t find the term used much for modern services. Gigabit internet is currently only available in very select areas of Australia.
Connections will be described as either “X Mbps/X Mbps” or “X Mbps Symmetrical.” When you run into a service with two different numbers (like ADSLs up to 24 Mbps/1 Mbps), the number on the left indicates the incoming bandwidth and the number on the right indicates outgoing bandwidth.
While most residential customers don’t require much upload speed, businesses might need more uploading power. The reason for this is that businesses are much more likely to send large amounts of data off-site, whether for backup purposes or just to keep all their services up and running.
Connection speed varies depending on what type of service you have and whether that service is “best effort” or “guaranteed speed.” Best effort services, the most ubiquitous of which is ADSL2+, don’t guarantee the speed that they provide. They are cheaper than guaranteed services, trading reliability for savings. Guaranteed services give more reliable speeds but cost more.

So what is it?

Connection speed (also known as bandwidth) is most easily explained by using the following analogy. Let’s say you have two doors, one for receiving goods and the other for sending them out to the world. If you are sending out relatively small boxes and letters (the equivalent of emails and basic web browsing), you’ll find that you can fit quite a few things through the doors. On the other hand, if you are trying to move furniture through the door (the equivalent of high definition videos or server backups), you’ll find that it might take up the whole door. You might even have to disassemble the furniture to move it out (which means it takes longer.) You might even have a crowd of letters and small parcels waiting behind the furniture to get out, clogging the door even more.
This backup is called “over-utilisation.” In essence, it happens when your connection is trying to send or receive more than your total available bandwidth can handle.

Common symptoms include:

  • Slow speeds while browsing websites or websites timing out repeatedly
  • Choppy, garbled, or low quality audio on your internet phone calls
  • File downloads and uploads taking way longer than usual

If you’ve been reading our other articles, you might have noticed that those symptoms look very similar to the criteria for a speed fault. This is because they both have the same result: a sluggish, frustrating internet experience. However, while speed faults can be resolved by a mixture of troubleshooting and instituting good bandwidth control policies, a growing business will often need to investigate increasing the size of their doors. Let Arrow help you determine what connection speed is most suitable for you today.