FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
It’s not easy making sense of internet download and upload speeds, throttling and megabytes and gigabytes. Below are three commonly received questions and answers.
It’s not easy making sense of internet download and upload speeds, throttling and megabytes and gigabytes. Below are three commonly received questions and answers.
The “40” and “10” refer to Mbps or megabits per second. It’s a metric used to measure the capacity and speed of data transfers.
Our Intermediate Internet Plan includes 40 “Down” and 10 “Up”.
The 10 Up or upload speed is ROUGHLY how quickly your connection will send data from your devices up to the Internet (uploading videos to YouTube, sending files via email, etc.). Most residential plans provide upload speeds that are 10-20% of the download speeds; Brasada Broadband provides upload speeds that are 25% of download speeds.
The 40 Down or download speed is ROUGHLY how quickly your connection will retrieve data from the Internet (web pages, Netflix videos, etc.). Download speed is usually more important to most users as most are downloading a lot more than they are uploading.
Netflix recommends a minimum download speed of
• 5 Mbps for standard HD video.
• 25 Mbps for HD and 4K content.
However, these numbers refer to what the service on its own needs — not the total speed of your Internet plan. For instance, say you have a 25 Mbps down connection speed. If the total capacity of your Internet connection is a pie, you can imagine that every user on the network (and all of their various devices) each get a “slice” of that pie. Essentially, your total potential speed is split across all of the devices connected to the network, so that 25 Mbps may only be providing 10-15 Mbps to Netflix itself, preventing you from streaming 4K content smoothly.
Also, using Wi-Fi will always be slower than a hardwired connection. Trying to stream over Wi-Fi can produce less-than-stellar results. Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to ensure that you’re maximizing your chances of a trouble-free streaming experience:
• Connect your streaming devices to the router with an ethernet cable whenever possible.
• When streaming over Wi-Fi, position the streaming device as close to the router as possible, with no physical barriers like walls or furniture between them.
Easy.
Step 1. Get close to your wireless router…or just know the test you’re about to run is going to show you the speed you’re getting where you are in your home – which can vary from room to room and whether you’re on wireless or plugged into the world wide web.
Step 2. Go to Google and search for “Internet Speed Test”. The first search result will be Google’s internet speed test. Click the blue button that reads “RUN SPEED TEST” in the lower right-hand corner of the Google result. Boom – it will start and just let it do its thing. It will test your down and up speeds. At the end, the circular dial will disappear, and your download and upload speeds will be shown.
If you have questions about our plans, please email broadbandsupport@brasada.com or call 541-323-6099.