Since most people know little about network speed, today, WAVLINK is going to talk about it. As we all known, it’s a unit of measurement for the network.

Network data transmission consists of data sending and receiving. Uploading is to send data externally; downloading is to receive data from other devices, which are subject to bandwidth and device performance. Generally，it follows the formula of 1 Mbps = 125 KB/s in the data transmission. For instance, if the uplink speed is 100 Mbps, the maximum upload speed will be 12500 KB/s (12.5 MB/s).。

The bandwidth provided for customers is the maximum technologically theoretical rate, which is slower than the theoretical speed caused by different configuration of computer, the location of the website being browsed and the bandwidth of terminal website. Theoretically, the speed of 2M (2 Mb/s) is 256 KB/s (2048 Kb/s), however, the actual rate is about 103—200 KB/s; the speed of 4 M (4 Mb/s) is 512 KB /s, actual speed is about 200 —- 440 KB/s.

Bandwidth Rate Comparison Tablet

We designed this table as reference for users to have a clear understanding about network speed (Data may be biased due to line quality).

The calculations in the above table are in accordance with most bandwidth’s calculations.

Calculation

In information theory, the bit is the smallest unit of information, called binary bit, and it is generally represented by 0 and 1. One Byte consists of 8 bits, which is used to represent a character in computer. The conversion between bit and Byte can be performed. 1 Byte=8 bit (1B=8b), 1 bit is abbreviated as 1b (lowercase), 1 Byte is abbreviated as 1B (capital).

Generally, the unit of the broadband rate is represented by bps (b/s).The bps (bit per second) means how many bits of information are transmitted per second, namely bit per second. In daily life, the 1M bandwidth we talk means 1 Mbps, which is different from MBps (megabytes per second).

1B=8b, 1 B/s=8 b/s (1 Bps=8 bps)

In the writing specification, B is supposed to represent Byte and b represents bit. But these units are always mixed up in writing, causing people to make mistakes in the actual calculation.

When downloading software, it is often seen that the download speed is displayed like 128 KBps (KB/s), 103 KB/s, that’s
because the unit of bandwidth provided by ISP is bits. While most download software displays byte (1 Byte=8 bit), so the actual rate can be obtained by conversion according to the conversion formula:

128 KB/s=128×8(Kb/s)=1024 Kb/s=1 Mb/s, namely 128 KB/s=1 Mb/s

PING

Someone who knows better about network would like to try to ping the gateway, or ping a website (www.google.com) to estimate the latency and network quality.

PING means a round trip time that data packet is sent from clients to the speed measurement point and returns to the clients (the speed point mentioned here refers to gateway or the server address of website).

Ping is measured by millisecond, the value of PING between 0~100 ms means a normal network speed without any obvious congestion.It may increase when going through the submarine cable. For example, the speed from the United States to Hong Kong is about 190 ms.

Jitter

The delay in the network refers to the delay time from the transmission to the reception; and the jitter refers to the time difference between the maximum delay and the minimum delay, showing the stability of a network. For example, the maximum delay is 20 milliseconds and the minimum delay is 5 milliseconds, then the network jitter is 15 milliseconds.

Speed Measurement Point

The speed measurement point is usually a server or a router, a place that can provide data upload and download. You can choose different speed points and the closer you are to it, the more accurate data you will get.

IP address

The IP address is used to number the networked computers. Without it, a networked computer cannot works normally. We can compare “personal computer” to “phone”, then “IP address” is equivalent to the “phone number.”

Tips on Speed Test

\1. Close other running web applications, web pages and software.

\2. Try to perform this speed test at different times. It is better to take average of the values of multiple tests during non-peak hours in order to get more accurate result.

\3. Bandwidth speed is affected by factors such as the configuration of your computer, the CPU frequency and system memory capacity, test time, the security status of computer, the performance of the Internet terminal devices, etc.