Broadband Speed About Latency Not Bandwidth

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[Commentary] Whenever anyone's talking about broadband they invariably refer to its speed, asking questions like how fast your service is. The answers are then given in terms of Kbps, Mbps, and Gbps. But in reality these measurements have nothing to do with speed. Instead they refer to bandwidth, which is more accurately described as carrying capacity. Think of it this way: Kbps equals a motorcycle, Mbps equals a car, and Gbps equals a semi-truck. All these vehicles can travel at roughly the same speed, but they each can carry a different amount of stuff. The importance of bandwidth becomes greater the heavier the files you need to transfer. Video, which are typically the heaviest files, requires the most bandwidth. And if your vehicle can't carry the whole thing then it needs to take it in pieces, which equates to when you have to wait for a video to download to start playing. So bandwidth does not equal speed, it equals capacity. But the speed of broadband does make a difference, and its quantified more directly by the measurement of latency, which tells you how much time it takes for a user's actions to make it through the network. There are multiple instances where the latency of a broadband connection matters. Not only does fiber have exponentially more bandwidth than other broadband technologies, it also features far lower latency.


Broadband Speed About Latency Not Bandwidth