Advice March 2020

Do You have the Right Internet Speed for What You Need?

 

How to Test your Internet Speed

During this Covid-19 crisis, the family is now at home together. We are all on the computers, phones, IPad’s and TV’s using the internet. Now comes the big question, why is everything so slow? I have put together a list of a few things you can check to make sure your network is working correctly.

1: Check your internet bandwidth. From your home computer go to the website http://Speedtest.net, this is the site I use, there are other sites that can perform this test as well. The web page will display your internet provider and another system to test the speed. Click on the go button to start the test. Once complete you will get 3 results. Download speed, upload speed and a ping result. Let’s take a second and define those terms so you can understand the results

A: Download speed is the rate at which data is transferred from the internet to your computer. Streaming video is using download speed.

B: Upload speed is the rate at which the data is transferred from your computer to the internet. Saving a file up to Office 365 or Google docs would be using upload speed.

C: Ping is the reaction time of your connection or how fast you get a response after you sent out a request. Ping is measured in Milliseconds. A high number in the ping response time will result in a slow response and have bad effects on streaming video and internet games, for example, even if you have great download speed.

D: As an example, here is a possible test result. The download speed is 57MBps, the upload speed 11Mps and the Ping result is 7ms. For the average household, this is a good result in the download and upload speeds and the ping result is excellent and will produce no delays.

E: If your results are not as fast as your internet contract, you can call your provider and see if there are any issues in the area or get them to fix the issue. If you need a higher speed you can call your internet provider and choose a different plan.

2: Consider your home network setup. Many home networks are wireless networks. The capabilities of wireless have improved over the years. Depending on the setup the wireless speeds can range from 11MBps to 1,300MBps in theory but the actual speeds are more in the range of 6MBps to 200MBps. As more people use their devices, the network will slow down. If everyone decides to stream a video on their device at the same time it might cause delays in the network.

 

Thank you and be safe,

Richard Oltmann

Principal Consultant / CIO

Blue Sky Technologies LLC.

Mobile (918)-284-9598

Office (918) 991-8060

http://blueskytechok.com

roltmann@blueskytechok.com

 “Let’s get together and talk”

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