Internet Speed

[hotrodpc]

Same at my dad. He can not watch video. You send him pics you have to reduce the pics in size and compress the files, and it still takes an hour to download 5 pics.

[BernieB]

Originally Posted by hotrodpc

You ever want to see how fast your connection is, go to www.2wire.com . On the top of the home page, click speed meter. I am on DSL and just came back with 2.41Mbps (megabytes per second) Not bad for the slower $15 month service.

Mbps is Megabits per second, not MegaBytes (difference being a capital or lower case letter, and a factor of 8)

[bubbatrucklover]

I'm at 1.70 Mbps on wireless. I guess that's not to bad considering some of the alternatives.

[hotrodpc]

Originally Posted by BernieB

Mbps is Megabits per second, not MegaBytes (difference being a capital or lower case letter, and a factor of 8)

Oops, Yes, you are correct BB. bits not bytes. That would be nice to 2.41 megaBYTES per second would't it?? Think we'll ever get there?

[crabtruck]

Originally Posted by hotrodpc

Oops, Yes, you are correct BB. bits not bytes.

Thank goodness you guys stopped before going into words and nibbles.
This is a family forum after all.

[BernieB]

Originally Posted by hotrodpc

Oops, Yes, you are correct BB. bits not bytes. That would be nice to 2.41 megaBYTES per second would't it?? Think we'll ever get there?

Sure, a lot of other countries are already there, and beyond. The USA is way behind the curve on this, compared to countries like Japan and Finland.

When I first started out with computers in the late 70's we were just transitioning from 110 baud to 300 baud, and when we went to 1200 baud I was one of the first people in the country to have a 1200 baud modem. (I was telecommunications editor for a major international computer mag at the time, and a guest lecturer for computer training classes for the IBEWU) So, in just 30 years (1979-2009) we've come from 110 baud to speeds exceeding 1gbps (in some networks, and even faster with fiber), which is a million-fold increase. And, such improvements are exponential, not linear, so we should see some pretty astounding things over the next ten years.

[bradrhale]

bits or bytes. they both start with a B. if i knew more about computers, than i might have caught myself but even now, i still dont know the difference besides spelling.

[BernieB]

A bit is a single 0 or 1, a byte is a group of eight 0's or 1's. It's binary counting. A text character is made up of one byte. A byte can represent any decimal number from 0 to 256, and the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) set is used to assign numeric values to a set of symbols that includes the upper and lower case alphabet, punctuation, numbers, special characters and a few special codes. So, if you have an Internet connection that, for arguments sake, is capable of 1 mbps, that means it can send 1 million bits per second (actually 1,024,000 but we'll just round it to one million), or about 125,000 characters per second. However, if your connection is 1 MBps (upper case denoting bytes, not bits) then you can send one million characters per second.

(All the above has been greatly simplified for very general use. I can get into a lot more detail if anyone wants.)

[BernieB]

I just want to add that a lot of ISP's and companies express their speeds as bits per second (mbps or kbps) simply because few people know the difference between bits and bytes, and assume that 1 mbps is one character per second. It makes the connection sound faster to the general public.

Heck, I even know of one ISP up in Pennsylvania that had ads saying something like, "Our competitor gives you download speeds of only 500KBps, while we offer you a full 1mbps!" Which, if you notice and understand the difference between the capital letters, means their competitor is offering a connection that is 4X faster than theirs, but they make it seem like they're giving you twice as much.

[hotrodpc]

Originally Posted by BernieB

A bit is a single 0 or 1, a byte is a group of eight 0's or 1's. It's binary counting. A text character is made up of one byte. A byte can represent any decimal number from 0 to 256, and the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) set is used to assign numeric values to a set of symbols that includes the upper and lower case alphabet, punctuation, numbers, special characters and a few special codes. So, if you have an Internet connection that, for arguments sake, is capable of 1 mbps, that means it can send 1 million bits per second (actually 1,024,000 but we'll just round it to one million), or about 125,000 characters per second. However, if your connection is 1 MBps (upper case denoting bytes, not bits) then you can send one million characters per second.

(All the above has been greatly simplified for very general use. I can get into a lot more detail if anyone wants.)

No No No, Great explanation you have there that will fry most brains BB. I get it though. I knew that. And could add a bit too, no pun intended, ha ha ha, Get it a bit? Oh I crack myself up sometimes. But you did just fine. Maybe now some will understand where the 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit comes from? Or why memory, (now that technology has allowed it to be big enough) is sold in 256MB units, or hard drives are sold in gigs, and the rounding is why everyone thinks they are getting ripped off. (Actually getting more than advetised but sometimes with Cache reserved on the HDD, people get confused is my point, cuz the Gigs don't match the bytes).