Internet speed what should be for. Internet speed - what is it and how is it measured, how to increase the speed of an Internet connection. What do internet speeds mean?

In the third millennium, the Internet quietly became an indispensable phenomenon in every home and in popularity came close to its competitor - television. Today, even older people make a choice in favor of the global network, because, unlike television, there is freedom of choice and endless possibilities. It often happens that the user is not satisfied with his Internet speed and asks a logical question - "What Internet speed is considered normal?". It will not be possible to answer it unequivocally, no matter how much you would like to. First of all, you need to determine several purposes for which you need the global Internet. And then, based on the goals, determine the speed.

We will not delve into discrete mathematics in order to study in detail what a measure of Internet speed is. It will be enough to say, so as not to mislead some, that Mbits and Mbytes are different units of information. And since users are more familiar with the usual megabytes, we give the following analogies:

  1. An Internet speed of 512 Mbps equals the speed of downloading any file of 64 kilobytes in 1 second.
  2. 6 megabits of the declared speed by the provider will equal about 750 kilobytes per second.
  3. Internet with 16 Mbps will download 2 megabytes per second of information from the network.

What Internet speed is considered good for mobile devices

For mobile devices such as a tablet or phone, a speed of 1 Mbps will be enough. Although this may not be enough if the user is going to perform several online tasks at once, i.e. watching movies, downloading files, etc. Usually, mobile content is several times smaller, which is why it also requires fewer resources than web versions of sites and applications. One Mbit is quite enough for other tasks, for example, for talking in Skype and other instant messengers. We can firmly say that this speed is quite normal for mobile devices.

What should be the speed of the Internet for online games and watching movies

Games and movies online are the most Internet-consuming tasks for a computer. Not always the speed you paid for is normal for watching a movie online in HD quality. And there are no fraudulent actions on the part of the provider. The thing is that there is not a single Internet provider that could provide a round-the-clock stable speed of transmitted information. This is facilitated by various factors - from the elementary load of the network, to the capabilities of your computer and location on the network.

More often than not, it is gamers who ask this question, because for an effective and interesting game, they just need to use a stable Internet speed. Known figures for the speed of data transfer over the network, which are necessary for the most popular online games.

  • For those who love the fantasy world of World of Warcraft, 512 Mbps will be enough.
  • World of Tanks and Dota games are at the same level of Internet consumption - up to 1 Mbps.
  • For Counter Strike, half a Mbit is also enough.

It is also worth considering the type of data transfer. If you have a 16 Mbps package connected via satellite signal, then it is likely that a 10 Mbps Internet connection that is connected via cable will be better and faster. This is due to the fact that the wireless connection is characterized by a large loss of data packets during transmission.

Internet Service Tariffs

In order to watch movies in different quality today, you need to know the approximate required Internet speed.

  • To watch videos with a 360p broadcast type, you need an Internet connection with a speed of about 1 Mbps ().
  • To watch the broadcast with 720p, 5 Mbps will be enough.
  • To view online video in Ultra HD 4K quality, you need more than 30 Mbps.

For what purposes do you need an Internet speed of more than 30 Mbps

At the moment, there are faster connections, but they are correspondingly expensive. Not every ISP is capable of providing speeds over 30 Mbps. First of all, this speed will be needed for those who have expensive and powerful devices, high-resolution TVs, computers with high performance that allow you to play demanding content. Users who often upload various videos, programs, games of large volumes to the network also need high speed. Therefore, the concept of normal Internet speed depends primarily on your tasks.

For everyone who uses the Internet for informational purposes only - visiting social networks, online magazines, reading books online, a speed of 1 Mbit of high-quality connection (with minimal packet loss or low ping) will be enough.

For those who are more demanding on the global network, say, the middle segment (and the majority of such users) is infrequent downloading of files, watching Youtube videos and online movies, using online games, etc. A speed of 10 Mbps will be sufficient.

How to measure internet speed

In order to measure the speed of the Internet and determine whether it is low or normal for you, there are special online services and programs (). The easiest way is to use online services, because for this there is no need to download unnecessary files to your computer and take up hard drive space. For the test to be as accurate as possible, you need to adhere to some conditions:

  1. Connect the cable directly through the network interface (network card) to the computer on which you will check the speed.
  2. On the computer being checked, you need to close all programs that are currently running. You also need to turn off all kinds of utilities that can run in the background, usually they are anti-virus firewalls and torrent clients that run with the computer.
  3. Open "Task Manager" and finally make sure that no downloads are in progress.

One of the popular services for checking the speed of packet transmission over a network is the service http://speedtest.net/ru/.

  1. To test your Internet, follow the link and click on the big button in the middle "Begin Test".
  2. After that, the verification system will connect to the nearest server located to your place of residence and carry out all the necessary procedures to determine the speed.
  3. At the end of the test, you will see on the monitor all the information on your connection, namely: the number of lost packets (ping), incoming and outgoing connection speed and your current IP address.

Service Speed ​​Test

Another similar service, which is available at https://2ip.ua/. Here you can also test the speed by clicking on the "Test" button on the main page. It is noteworthy that sometimes the test results between these two services differ and the difference in places is large. But it cannot be said unequivocally that the services powder the brains of users, because the conditions and methods of verification may vary. Not to mention other factors influencing the result - the location of the service servers, the network load at the moment, etc.

Service 2ip

It is impossible to give an exact figure for Internet speed in Mbps, which would be suitable for each user and would be considered normal. You need to choose a package with a certain speed based on your needs.

In contact with

Today, providers offer a fairly wide range of tariffs with different connection speeds. And of course, each of them needs to sell the most expensive and fastest channel. They promise us anything: if we take a slower channel, then our files will be downloaded slowly, the video will twitch ... Our awareness on this issue still leaves much to be desired, and it is difficult for us to make the right decision on choosing a tariff with the optimal speed. Do you know what connection speed you need to have to play streaming video in 360p or 720p quality? I don't think many will answer yes. In this article, I will tell you how you can easily measure the connection speed and check the fulfillment of the provider's obligations, as well as how to choose the optimal connection speed without overpaying for some ephemeral “lack of brakes”.

How to measure connection speed?

2IP

There are a number of independent services for measuring connection speed. — one of the most detailed domestic services. It gives fairly accurate, yet accessible, information about your connection.

The service also helps to understand what exactly the specified speed means (for example, what 4 Mbps means), at what speed files will be downloaded at such a connection speed. There is even a calculator in which you can enter the file size, and the service will calculate the time it takes to download it to your computer.

speed test

Of the reputable foreign services, we can recommend Speedtest. Also, this service has a mobile application that can be installed on your tablet or phone. On the service page, it will not be possible to check the speed from a mobile device, since flash is used there, which is not available for mobile devices.

We will show some screenshots from the mobile version.

What connection speed do you need?

What internet connection speed do you really need? Here it will be necessary to break down the tasks that we set before the connection into categories.

Watching streaming video

360p streaming video requires a 2 Mbps channel. A channel of 4 Mbps is enough for 720p video. There is almost no higher quality video stream on the network at the moment. However, when preparing this article, I specifically checked the playback of YouTube videos in 1080p resolution. And I did not find any brakes on my 4 Mbps.

Online Games

For online games, a significantly lower connection speed is also enough. So the popular World Of Tanks are generally ready to get by with a connection of 0.25 Mbps (256 Kbps).

File download speed

Yes, connection speed greatly affects the speed of downloading files. But even a 500 MB file on a 4 Mbps channel can theoretically download in about 15 minutes. Are you ready to overpay monthly for 100-200 rubles for this file to be uploaded once a month, for example, for 5 minutes, for example? Yes, and we are talking about a purely theoretical file download time. After all, a lot depends on how fast the server can give it to you. In practice, there may not be any benefit from increasing your connection speed from 4 to 5 or even 10 Mbps.

Conclusion

Having learned to determine your needs for Internet connection speed, you can choose the optimal tariff and not overpay an extra two or three hundred rubles a month for something that you might not even use. Measuring the speed will help to understand whether the provider is fulfilling the stated obligations under the contract.

However, do not forget that if several users use your connection simultaneously from different devices, this must also be taken into account. In this case, you must either choose a connection with a higher speed, or negotiate with your home.

Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbps to a low speed, for example, 512 kbps. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

Of course, the Internet speed must be chosen based on what you do online and how much you are willing to pay per month for Internet access. From my own experience, I want to say that the speed of 15 Mbps suits me quite well as a person who works on the network. Working on the Internet, I have 2 browsers turned on, and each has 20-30 tabs open, while problems arise more from the computer side (to work with a large number of tabs, you need a lot of RAM and a powerful processor) than from the Internet speed. The only moment when you have to wait a bit is the moment the browser is first launched, when all tabs are loaded at the same time, but usually it takes no more than a minute.

1. What do internet speed values ​​mean

Many users confuse Internet speed values ​​​​thinking that 15Mb / s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb / s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes and at the output we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 Mb, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will be downloaded in 12-13 minutes.

We watch a lot or a little of your Internet speed

  • The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kbps (this speed is not enough to watch online video);
  • The speed is 4 Mbps 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB / s or 512 kB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
  • The speed is 6 Mbps 6 / 8 = 0.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
  • The speed is 16 Mbps 16 / 8 = 2 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
  • The speed is 30 Mbps 30 / 8 = 3.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
  • The speed is 60 Mbps 60 / 8 = 7.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
  • The speed is 70 Mbps 60 / 8 = 8.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
  • The speed is 100 Mbps 100/8 = 12.5 MB/s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many connecting the Internet are worried about the possibility of watching online video, let's see what kind of traffic movies with different quality need.

2. Internet speed required to watch online video

And here you will find out a lot or a little of your speed for watching online videos with different quality formats.

Broadcast type Video bitrate Audio bitrate (stereo) Traffic Mb/s (megabytes per second)
Ultra HD 4K 25-40 Mbps 384 kbps from 2.6
1440p (2K) 10 Mbps 384 kbps 1,2935
1080p 8000 kbps 384 kbps 1,0435
720p 5000 kbps 384 kbps 0,6685
480p 2500 kbps 128 kbps 0,3285
360p 1000 kbps 128 kbps 0,141

We see that all the most popular formats are reproduced without problems with an Internet speed of 15 Mbps. But to watch video in 2160p (4K) format, you need at least 50-60 Mbps. but there is one BUT. I don’t think that many servers will be able to distribute video of this quality while maintaining such a speed, so if you connect the Internet at 100 Mbps, you won’t be able to watch online video in 4K.

3. Internet speed for online games

When connecting home Internet, every gamer wants to be 100% sure that his Internet speed will be enough to play his favorite game. But as it turns out, online games are not at all demanding on the speed of the Internet. Consider what speed popular online games require:

  1. DOTA 2 - 512 kbps
  2. World of Warcraft - 512 kbps
  3. GTA online - 512 kbps.
  4. World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbps.
  5. Panzar - 512 kbps
  6. Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps

Important! The quality of your game online is more dependent not on the speed of the Internet, but on the quality of the channel itself. For example, if you (or your provider) receive Internet via satellite, then no matter what package you use, the ping in the game will be much higher than that of a wired channel with a lower speed.

4. Why do you need Internet more than 30 Mbps.

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many people will be able to provide such a speed in full, the company "Internet to Home" is not the first year on this market and completely inspires confidence, the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are on top here. A high Internet connection speed may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading them from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or you download large games every day, or upload videos or work files of large volumes to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to run.

By the way, speeds of 3 Mbps and below usually make surfing the net a little unpleasant, not all online video sites work well, and downloading files is generally not happy.

Be that as it may, there are plenty to choose from in the Internet services market today. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by local firms, and often the level of their service is also on top. The cost of services in such firms is of course much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such firms is quite insignificant, usually within a district or two.

So, let's deal with this issue in order. In the 21st century, there is a very serious question about the choice of home Internet, so that it meets our requests and needs. First you need to decide what the Internet is for.

How is internet speed measured?

There is an opinion on the network that 1 Mbps (megabits per second) is the same as 1 Mbps (megabytes per second). And this opinion is erroneous, because one megabyte is equal to approximately eight megabits. So, if you have a speed of 2-3 megabytes, then this means that the connection speed approximately equal to 16-24 megabits.

Now imagine that we need to download a track with a size of 4 megabytes, and if the connection is 2 mb / s (or 16 Mbps), then the song will be downloaded in 2 seconds. Users note that the optimal and normal Internet speed is approximately 20 megabits per second. And such an indicator more than meets the majority of requests.

What tasks affect the choice of speed

Social networks, Skype, smartphones and tablets. Let's start with smartphones and tablets. These devices require less resources, because for their full functioning in the global network, as well as for using programs, 1 Mbps is enough.

Communication

Things are a little different with social networks, in which people sometimes sit for hours: Facebook (Facebook, Fb), VKontakte (VK), Odnoklassniki or others. In them we communicate with friends living in other cities or countries, we are looking for thematic groups and listen to music. However, just social networks require little - 3 Mbps will be enough.

But with Skype, the question is more complicated. Given that sometimes the interlocutors are on the other side of the world or in another country, it would be nice to have a speed of 5 or more Mbps. It is worth noting that Skype allows you to share files, and the exchange efficiency also depends on the connection.

Watching videos online

This is one of the most popular needs, considering how many popular films and TV series there are in the world. And, of course, you want to sit comfortably and enjoy a nice smooth picture. However, this often fails, because the video constantly slows down, not having time to load the file.

Firstly, a lot depends on the quality of the video, as this affects the file size. An HDrip quality movie weighs an average of 1.4 GB, while a DVD quality movie weighs 4.5 GB. But movies in HD (Full-HD) quality will already weigh all 12-13 GB. Accordingly, the minimum connection speed should be 3 Mbps. If you want to enjoy the maximum picture quality, then prepare the Internet at a speed of at least 10 Mbps.

Online Games

It is worth noting the variety of entertainment offered in the global network. The leading place among them is occupied by online games, where players are offered to join the fight and compete in skill with other gamers. The most popular in our space are such games as: World of Tanks (WoT), DOTA2, World of Warcraft (WoW), War Thunder and many others.

To play them, it is enough to have a speed of 3 Mbps. However, if you actively use voice communication, and also play at maximum settings, then a speed of 5 Mbps is already required. And I would like to add: provided that you are streaming, it is better to have indicators of 10 Mbps. A great helper in determining the quality will help ping during the game itself. Ping is an indicator of the speed of access to data on the server, and with its value up to 50 ms, the quality of communication is at its best, with a value of 150 ms, the connection leaves much to be desired.

Factors affecting connection speed

Despite the promise of the provider, the speed will also largely depend on the user himself:

  1. Tariff plans. Some providers artificially limit the speed and amount of traffic. It is worth mentioning that even unlimited tariffs have a speed limit from the provider itself. So choose carefully and watch your internet.
  2. Viruses and virus programs. No matter how trite it may be, a fact is a fact. Viruses can affect the productivity of the computer itself, reducing performance and slowing down processes. And they can also create uncontrolled Internet traffic that will eat up your speed. So, friends, antiviruses are in service.
  3. operating system. Yes, yes, that too. The OS must be configured specifically to be able to interact with the Internet. The main advice is not to touch the factory settings if you do not understand this.
  4. Routers and WiFi. Already quite a bit I want to add that the setting of such devices must also be correct in order to ensure maximum speed. When connecting via Wi-Fi, the quality also depends on how far you are from the source.

So let's sum up

  • If your goal is online games, social networks, listening to music, instant messengers and sometimes third-party sites, then 5 Mbps will quite meet these requests.
  • Usage 10-15 Mbps will already allow you to enjoy watching high-quality videos or streaming.
  • Serious level of internet connection, which will cope with the vast majority of requests, you can safely call a speed of 20-25 Mbps.
  • Connection at 40-50-60 Mbps only needed for special and specific tasks when working with very large files and in cloud systems. If you are not doing this, then this speed is even too much.

So, the normal and optimal Internet connection speed is 15–25 Mbps. This is just the average figure. Many providers can promise you speeds of 60 megabits or more. But if you use the Internet to play games and watch videos, you don’t need such a “powerful” tariff at all.

Video

In the 21st century - the era of digital technology, the global network has become not a luxury, but a necessary tool, both at work and at home, while displacing its main competitor - the TV. This is due to the fact that here you can watch news, play games, listen to music online, while the choice is not limited here, compared to a TV in which you can turn on only certain channels that are provided by the provider or the signal is received using an antenna. However, people who are not well versed in connection issues may not always understand what internet speed is considered normal and will it be enough for certain tasks (watching movies, reading news sites, playing games, etc.)?

In order to consider this issue, for a start it is worth understanding what the speed of the Internet is calculated in. To understand this, it is absolutely not necessary to get into the wilds of discrete mathematics and information theory. It is only worth noting that many people confuse the concept of megabytes and megabits. The first definition is a unit of calculation of the physical space on the hard drive, and the second defines the speed of the connection, that is, they describe completely different measurements. It can be noted that at a speed of 8 megabits, 1 megabyte of information will be downloaded per second. That is, these concepts should be evaluated and calculated by a proportion like 8:1.

Mobile Speed

Many people do not use a computer, but actively use their phone or tablet to access the Internet. Usually, the speed of 3G technology is enough to watch videos, listen to music and radio online. At the same time, it should be taken into account that if you need to perform many tasks, then displaying the necessary information can be long. If we talk about the home Internet, then we can say with full confidence that 1Mbps is enough for a mobile device to watch videos, visit websites, listen to music, use instant messengers, etc.

Optimal speed for online games and videos

Movie theater sites always have movies in various quality. If we talk about HD resolution, then it can be argued that in this case the minimum speed should be at least 8 megabits, although UltraHD will need a connection speed in the region of 30 Mbps. But here you still need to take into account the fact that the placement of the site on the server can be far away, and, accordingly, it takes more time to receive and send a signal, and in this case, even a high speed will not guarantee viewing without freezes and slowdowns.

For online games, it is very important to have a reasonable indicator of speed, because if the ping is high, a person simply will not be able to respond to certain actions in a timely manner. But with all this, for popular toys such as World of Tanks, Warcraft, Dota, Counter Strike, 1 megabit of speed is enough for a stable connection. But the user must understand that during the game it is always recommended to close torrent programs, because they cut the speed very much.

Not unimportant is the fact that a wireless connection works worse than a wired connection due to the fact that the probability of packet loss is higher. For example, if a person uses a satellite connection to the Internet, then its speed can be compared with a wired connection, which is half as much in this parameter.

Not every provider can offer similar marks for this indicator, although a lot of fiber optic trunks are already being laid at the moment, with the help of which such criteria may be quite real.

Such speeds are necessary if a high-resolution TV, modern and productive desktop devices (computers and laptops) are connected at home. Also, it is not unimportant that if there are several gadgets in the house, the speed will be divided between them, and accordingly, for a normal connection to the global network, this must be taken into account.

Well, what you should pay attention to is that if a user needs the Internet to visit sites, social networks, view ordinary resources, then such marks for the 30 Mbit parameter are absolutely not needed, 1 megabit will be enough. However, for high-resolution, constant downloading of other content and files, you need really high speeds. It all depends on the user and the tasks that he sets for himself.

Internet speed measurement

It is absolutely not necessary to use additional software to calculate the connection speed. It is enough to visit one of the service sites on the Internet and solve this problem. At the same time, it is worth considering the fact that before performing this operation, you need to close all programs that somehow use Internet speed (torrent programs, online chats, instant messengers, browsers), and this must be done on all devices connected to this channel .

There are quite a few similar sites for calculating speed, but among the most popular and accurate, one can single out. To calculate the speed, visit this resource and click "begin test" (Begin test).

After a certain time, the screen will display data on the download speed, upload speed, as well as ping - the stability of the data packet transfer rate (whether data is lost when receiving or sending). In addition, in this way you can determine the external IP address that is currently assigned to this connection point.

In addition to this service, you can also highlight and.

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