Internet Speed Test

What is Internet Speed?

Internet speed, the number they give you (5 Mbps, for example), has nothing to do with how fast your internet works. It’s not like a car or motorcycle where you can measure how fast it goes in miles per hour (mph).

Instead, internet speed is your (allocated) bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be sent to you, usually measured in seconds. For example, 5 Mbps would mean that you can receive up to 5 megabits of data per second.

How Does Bandwidth Work?

The best way to explain (and understand) how bandwidth (and your internet speed) works is by using an analogy.

Think of bandwidth like a freeway. All cars (data) travel at the same speed, so to get more data from the internet to your computer faster, the freeway needs to be wider.

In other words, say 1 Mbps is the equivalent to a 1 lane freeway. And let’s say that you were trying to download an image, which is 5 Mb in size. So if you had a bandwidth of 1 Mbps (1 lane freeway) it would take you roughly 5 seconds to download the image.