Not sure how to tell if you’ve got a good internet speed? Here’s how to find out if you have the right plan for your needs.
next to price, internet speed is one of the main decision drivers when shopping for internet plans or evaluating your current internet service. But, unlike price – where you can easily look at the monthly cost and say “that fits my budget” or “that’s a new car payment” – internet speeds can be a bit trickier to gauge.
Is 100 Mbps “fast” internet? Is 10 Mbps “slow”? What internet speeds do I get? These are all questions many of us ask, so we’ve created this simple guide to explain them.
Let’s look at how internet speed is measured, what is considered fast internet, what may be slow internet and other factors to help you answer the question: What is a good internet speed?
How is internet speed measured?
Internet speed is determined by how much data the connection can download (download speeds) or upload (upload speeds) per second.
In both cases, the speed is shown as bits per second (bps). Since an internet connection transfers thousands of bits per second, we use the prefixes k, M and G to show how many thousands of bits we’re talking about. If you’re familiar with the metric system, you know “k” = 1,000, “M” = 1,000k (1,000,000) and “G” = 1,000M (1,000,000,000).
When researching internet speeds, you’ll likely see Mbps more than kbps or Gbps. That’s because Mbps speeds are better suited to what we use the internet for.
Think of “broadband” as the national internet speed limit
A good internet speed is at or above 25 Mbps. These speeds will support most online activity, such as HD streaming, online gaming, web browsing and downloading music.
Fast internet speeds, those in the 100+ Mbps range, are often better, especially if you want your internet plan to support multiple devices and users at once.