Broadband Speed and What it Means to You by:Jakob Pedersen

However experienced the buyer, the one thing most broadband customers ask about is 'speed'

. This is pretty much an umbrella term for how easy the functionality of your broadband connection and provider services are. When it comes to the actual speed of your connection, there are some great ways to find out if you are getting what you pay for.

What do the numbers mean? What speed do I need, and where do I get it?

There are new ways to test the speed and efficiency of your connection now. Before sites such as Speedtest.net existed there were few ways to properly asses the health of your connection, and in the past internet providers were reluctant to take any responsibility for lack of service on their end. But now providers are much more transparent when there is a problem, largely because they know that you have technology at your hands that will verify or discredit their claims. A good example of this was a globally established provider that would disconnect gaming sites during peak hours. For a long time they denied this, until software available online contradicted their claims and they came clean. You no longer need to depend on your provider to test the speed and efficiency of your broadband connection.

Then again, if you are trying to do too much with your connection, outside of your download limits, things will inevitably be slower.

Watching, downloading and playing - your speed depends on what you want

A huge benefit of having a fast connection is having the ability to download and stream videos. While it is generally assumed that most internet users will at some point download a movie or a song, providers will give you a limit on how much you can download. To give you a rough guide to download speeds, and how far this has advanced, a standard dial up connection would take around 12 minutes to download one song and 14 seconds to view a typical webpage. The next in the scale is a 256K broadband connection. This will download a song in 3 minutes and you can view a webpage in 3 seconds. For a 4MB-8MB connection it will take from 5 seconds to 0 seconds to download a whole song. This shows the steady progress of broadband capabilities and it also shows you the variety of what's on offer. It is really important to emphasise again that when you are looking at speeds and download limits, you should really think about what you require from your connection and how much time you wantto spend downloading, streaming and browsing. It is recommended that you opt for at least 4MB, as this is the minimum standard offered by good providers and usually they will offer more.

About the author

Jakob is a Danish writer who specialize in reviewing mobile broadband and other types of wireless internet connections.

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