You bite the bullet and upgrade your internet modem to the 1 GB speed that every company is now touting as “the speed” necessary to run everything blazing fast.
1GB is equal to 1000 Mbps. So based on 5 devices per household, you should be getting 200 Mbps per device, which is 100 times faster than the Tennessee average of 2 Mbps per device*.
But you’ve upgraded your system and it’s still not getting the speed everyone else seems to be getting. You’re still experiencing video freeze, game lag spikes, and teleconference hangs. What’s the deal?
The problem may not be speed. It could be other factors such as latency and loss which are unrelated to speed. Latency is the time taken to move packets of data from the server to your location. Loss is the proportion of packets of data that are lost in transit.
Using an internet speed test application such as Speedtest.net, your latency is roughly equal to twice the ping test shown in the upper left of the reporting screen. Ping is the one-way test of a data packet, latency is the round-trip of a data packet. Anything below 20-40 ms should be good for most work and gaming.
The internet provider tech will need to look at the signal strength and check to see if there is noise/signal interference leaking into the line from electrical circuits or other devices in your home/office. Any of these factors can hinder the speed of your internet. There are complicated settings that may need to be adjusted by the tech along with testing that will need to be completed when setting up your account. This is an area best left to the techs with the tools and experience.
Most internet providers have two departments – one for the onsite installation and one for maintaining the outside lines. The tech can only do so much on site. They have to contact the line maintenance people to repair any other issues such as switches and signal boosters on the main lines.
For example, when I set up my initial Comcast business connection, it took about 3 months to work out all the bugs to get a stable high-speed connection. Being at the end of the line for their business service also adversely affected my connection. The provider tech was very helpful in explaining what needed to be done and what to expect, so I wasn’t surprised when everything wasn’t perfect on the first attempt.
When I recently moved up to the higher gig-speed, my provider equipment needed to be upgraded as well. It still took a couple of trips to tweak these settings. It’s important to understand this is a process, not an instant change.
*Based on research by Broadband search, while 97.9% of Tennesseans have connectivity of speeds to 10 Mbps. Broken down to an average of 5 devices (i.e. computers, phones, TVs) all using internet, that’s only 2 Mbps per user. This is based on cities that have less than 50,000 residents. In Tennessee cities with over 50,000 residents, the internet speed is better with the average being 38 Mbps.
All the best and stay well,
Jim Nay
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