Jenni: What do all these numbers and things mean 6 Mbps/512 Kbps Downstream/Upstream? We’re trying to figure out what kind of speed we will need. Mind you we don’t have a home phone, so dial-up may not be the most affordable option.
Narrator: The numbers represent maximum speeds. 1 bit is a 1 or 0. You need 8 bits to send useful information to a computer. 6 Mbps means 6 million bits per second. For those nerds in the audience, it means exactly 6,144,000 bits sent in one second. Divide by 8, and it becomes 768 bytes in one second. So a large MS Word document taking 200 KB (204,800 bytes) would take 267 seconds – or 4 and a half minutes.
There are two directions: data you get from the Internet, and data you send to the Internet. Watching movies, looking at web pages, and reading e-mail gets data from the Internet – at the downstream speed. Upstream matters when you send e-mail to somebody, load a file to a website, or use file sharing. You will use the upstream very little. And stuff like e-mail takes up almost no space (very few bits). In other words, 512 Kbps is perfectly reasonable for home use.
Your options are cable and DSL. Cable, obviously, comes from the cable company. If you have cable TV, call and ask if they have a discounted bundle for TV and Internet. DSL comes through the phone company (like AT&T). DSL is limited by location. It may or may not be available in your area.
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