She believes no one should feel lost in internet land and that a good internet connection significantly extends your life span. Find an internet provider in your area that offers the right speeds for you. See Your Providers. What is a good download speed? What is a good upload speed? What is a good Wi-Fi speed?
What is download speed? What is upload speed? Download speed is generally more important than upload speed Although we constantly both download and upload information online, for most of us, the information we upload is generally much smaller. How do I know if I need more speed? Accessed June 16 CenturyLink vs. Author - Peter Christiansen Peter Christiansen writes about satellite internet, rural connectivity, livestreaming, and parental controls for HighSpeedInternet. Editor - Cara Haynes Cara Haynes has been editing and writing in the digital space for seven years, and she's edited all things internet for HighSpeedInternet.
Another thing to consider is which ISPs offer service fast enough to handle the internet activities you enjoy the most.
It will ask you a few questions about your household and how you use the internet and then recommend an appropriate speed for you. Different households can have drastically different internet needs.
To this point, this article has focused on the connection between the internet and your home or business. This section focuses on your home network. Wi-Fi is a term for a specific configuration of router hardware and controls that allows for wireless transmission of information. It is also known as IEEE When this technology was developed, industry leaders wanted to give it a name that would help it gain popularity. Your home Wi-Fi network will also impact your internet speed.
The more devices on your network using the internet at the same time, the more bandwidth you will need. Many internet service providers offer Wi-Fi networking as an option. If you want to get the most out of your internet service, we highly recommend this option. Just find the one for your ISP, and it will walk you through the process step by step. Your modem is the gateway between your home network and the greater internet. Your router is the switchboard for all the different connections among the devices on your network.
The equipment you get from your ISP is usually sufficient for basic internet usage. But, if you want your home network to perform at its best, you may need to upgrade — especially if you have four or more devices connected to the internet. Here are a few of our most popular ones:. With so many settings to adjust, this can seem like a daunting task. Our step-by-step guide to improving your Wi-Fi speed will help you do just that.
Now that you know why your internet speed is important, how to test it, what the test results mean, how much speed you need, and how to get the most out of the speed you have, you should consider if your ISP delivers enough speed for your household.
People living in major US cities usually have a few ISP options, and, unless you live in a very remote location, you likely have at least two. Most ISPs offer several internet packages, each capable of delivering a different level of bandwidth. If your current internet subscription is not fast enough, you should consider upgrading your package or possibly switching to another provider more capable of meeting your speed needs. If you would like to know which ISPs are available in your area, simply enter your zip code in the box below.
Then you can click to see which speeds they offer on each of their packages. Author - Rebecca Lee Armstrong. Rebecca Lee Armstrong has more than six years of experience writing about tech and the internet, with a specialty in hands-on testing. She started writing tech product and service reviews while finishing her BFA in creative writing at the University of Evansville and has found her niche writing about home networking, routers, and internet access at HighSpeedInternet. Cara Haynes has been editing and writing in the digital space for seven years, and she's edited all things internet for HighSpeedInternet.
When she's not editing, she makes tech accessible through her freelance writing for brands like Pluralsight. She believes no one should feel lost in internet land and that a good internet connection significantly extends your life span.
Quick Links:. Upload speed vs. We all want fast internet service—but how fast? It all depends on what your family does online, and whether they do it at the same time. This calculator can help. Understanding internet speed. The term refers to how fast data—say, a Netflix movie—travels into your home. Some superfast fiber services can send data at a gigabit per second Gbps. Almost any internet speed is fine for receiving a text-only email, and you may need only 1 Mbps to listen to a Spotify song.
Bandwidth is closely related to speed; it reflects the amount of speed available for you to use, because your whole household will share whatever internet speed you have. So if two TVs in your home are each streaming 4K movies, you need at least 50 Mbps of bandwidth. The calculator above can help you estimate your bandwidth needs, but note that the speeds it uses are estimates based on a range of industry sources.
In practice, speeds vary depending on the source of the data, and other factors. If you listen to the above engineer, you can probably get away with the company's cheapest package, which offers download speeds of up to Mbps. According to the company, that should be enough to accommodate up to eight devices simultaneously connecting to the internet.
In many cases, choosing your internet connection speed means weighing how much you're hoping to get versus how much you're willing to pay.
But you need to be ready for the possibility that you won't get what you want. Most ISPs offer internet packages with an important caveat: "up to. So, if you're paying for a Mbps package, you may get that speed if not more at times. But it's also possible that you'll get less. But even if your ISP is delivering the speeds you want, the number of devices simultaneously connecting to your network could give you some trouble that could ultimately slow down your connection.
With everything from laptops and smartphones to TVs and connected appliances relying on a steady stream of data, it's easy to underestimate your needs. Much like a car can go mph, but we rarely drive it that way. So, how can you tell if your network needs a boost?
Lavoie said to look for "quality of experience" metrics, including load times, the number of connectivity glitches and connection drop-outs. It's also important to use online speed-check tools, like the aforementioned Fast. If you're an avid gamer, playing online with friends might be one of the things you enjoy most. And having faster internet is really important for that. Over on its support forums, Microsoft offers a handy reference document to help you know how fast your internet speeds should be to accommodate online play.
According to the document, you'll want a download speed of 3 Mbps or better and an upload speed of 0. Your ping rate a measure of lag your Internet connection causes in online gaming should also be less than milliseconds. When it's time to stream games between friends on Twitch , you'll need faster connectivity, according to Microsoft and other game companies.
According to Twitch's broadcasting guidelines , you'll need a bit rate of at least 2. It then goes up to 3. If you want to stream at p and 30 fps, you need 3.
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