Making Sense Of A Broadband Speed Check

So you have done your test and you know yourwould around 700-000Mb, although the DVD quality
speeds, but what do those digits actually mean?ones can be in the Gb's (Gigabytes). If you want to
Broadband speed is measured usually in Megabits pergame online- World of Warcraft is the most popular
second. This is usually abbreviated to Mb, Mbps or Mbonline game but also games like Splinter Cell are widely
sec. These are all the same thing. Its important not toused- then you can expect to download between 4
get Mb's (megabits) mixed up with MB's (megabytes)MB and 40MB an hour. Keep this in mind when you
as MB's are about eight times as big as Mb's. If youare selecting your broadband package as many
download anything you will notice that file sizes fromservice providers will limit downloads. For some people
things like music and movies are measure in MB's.2GB a month is plenty to browse with, however if you
Dial up internet is so much slower than Broadband thatare gaming or downloading then you should look at a
it is measured in Kilobits per second. This is usuallyhigher limit. Otherwise your speed may be capped by
abbreviated to either K, Kb, Kbps or Kb/sec. There areyour provider once you have exceeded your limit. For
1000 Kilobits in a Megabit.instance if you have a 20Mb connection you may find
So some useful things to know are roughly how muchit capped to 512Kb once over the download limit. Other
big downloads can be-for instance a single music trackproviders will charge per Mb downloaded in excess of
would be around 4MB and an album would beyour cap.
anywhere between 40MB and 5MB.A feature film