Companies like Spectrum and AT&T provide internet connections for homes and businesses. When you subscribe to the service, they will give you different speeds for different prices. That speed will generally be in Mbps (megabits per second). You don’t need to understand what a megabit is, you just need to know that bigger numbers are better. The speed rating has two parts, download and upload. A typical speed would be shown as 100 X 10 Mbps. That means 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload.
Download is how fast you receive information from a website and upload is how fast you can send information. For visiting websites or watching video, download speed is most important. In our current context upload speed has become important. For online meetings, you need to send your video and audio to the other participants. For sending large files via email or to shared resources like Dropbox, upload speed determines how quickly they will arrive at the destination.
Now is a good time to check what speed you are paying for and how much you are paying. When Spectrum bought Time Warner, they introduced new faster plans that cost less than the older, slower plans. You only get the new plan if you call and ask for it. AT&T has begun offering new fiber plans for home and business that have much faster upload speeds. If you have four people in the house trying to do online meetings at the same time, faster upload can be a big help.
If you need help figuring out your current speed or connection needs, please contact us.
