Internet connection speeds and why they are significant

First understanding a few terms will help you understand how internet connection speeds are measured the data transfer rates.

1 on/off bit is indicated by the lower case b:

8 bits in a byte, which is indicated by an uppercase B.

1024 bytes = kilobyte or KB

1024 KB = megabyte or MB

1024 MB = gigabyte or GB

1024 GB = terabyte or TB

1024 PB = petabye or PB

Note the prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta all refer to the same thing.

Hard drives because of block sizes and industry standards have rounded to the nearest 1000, which explains why the total storage of a HD or SSD is less than suggested by the actual drive advertising. This has been industry practice since the first storage mechanisms came to be.

Download means coming off the internet to your computer

Upload means going from your computer to the internet

When wireless routers are connected to your internet, your top speed is the shared speed for each device on the wireless network. Meaning if you have 150 Mbps and 3 devices, the top download speed you will get is 50 Mbps if your internet carrier can handle it. Wireless connections may also be compromised if your rented wireless router from your internet service provider has an open network assigned to it. Make sure yours is the only network on an 802.11n or better security.

VPNs, or virtual private networks are frequently utilized by schools and businesses so many people can share an internet connection from home on the network dedicated for the school or business. The downside is many VPNs are limited to 2-5 Mbps speed while on the office network depending on the number of users. Check with your VPN administrator any bottlenecks you may incur.

Typical DSL download speed connection speed 2 Mbps = 2 Megabit per second or .25 MB per second.

Typical DSL upload speed is 384 Kbps, although SDSL can be 2 Mbps up, and in newer DSL places up to 8 Mbps.

Typical Cable upload speed is 7 Mbps or 0.875 MBps.

Typiacl low end cable is 50 Mbps or 6.25 MBps. Low end fiber is that both upload and download.

Typical 5G connection download speed is 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps or 12.5 to 37.5 Mbps. Some 5G connections are 3 times faster.

Typical 802.11n WiFi router is 150 Mbps or 18.75 MBps.

Gigabit is advertised at 1000 Gbps or 125 MBps.

With these values you can take a file and divide its MB or GB size by the speed per second to figure out the time it takes to upload or download. When you do multiple files at once that are smaller, it typically will take longer than 1 file the same total size because of a process known as handshaking. Each internet connection involves each connection point handshaking with the next in a relay system. One of the first chat software standards was called IRC or Internet Relay Chat, making it more obvious what is happening. We put this tip in iCloud.com to give you a better idea why uploads or downloads to the iCloud servers may take a certain amount of time, but this tip could be referred to in any forum.