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Understanding Internet Connections Speeds

When selecting your home Internet package, the 2 main factors that influence your decision are speed and price. The faster speeds are typically the most expensive packages. It's important to understand how your Internet connection works so you can select the right package for your home.

Internet speed is often referred to as bandwidth, and is usually measured in Megabits per second (Mbps). Your Internet speed is the amount of data that can be transferred every second over your Internet connection. Your Internet speed determines the activities you can do online, how quickly you can do them, and how many activities can be done simultaneously. 

When you're selecting an Internet package, there will be a download and upload speed. The download speed is the speed that data travels from a remote location on the Internet to your Internet-connected device. The upload speed is the speed at which data travels from your Internet-connected device to a remote location on the Internet.

If we use streaming a YouTube video as an example, the upload portion would be sending the request from your Internet-connected device to the server to stream the video. The download portion would be the actual streaming of the video. This is why download speeds are generally faster than upload, because most of our online activities involve downloading a lot of data.

Depending on the type of activities you do online, upload speed may be quite important. If you are uploading videos to social media platforms, uploading files to cloud applications, or working from home, upload speed will play a larger factor in your online activities.

The speed of your Internet connection has a massive impact on the quality of your online experience. When choosing your Internet package, make sure you choose a package that can meet your online needs.