Understanding Your Internet Speed
Find answers to common questions
Speed, bandwidth, and usage
Since your connection has many diverse parts that play a role in your Internet experience, it is important to know the difference between speed, bandwidth, and usage.
Speed
Often when we discuss slow speeds the problem it’s time to upgrade your Internet service to allow more throughput (speed). Your Internet speed is measured in bits per second or bps for short. Generally, when we talk about speed, it’s how we experience it in a web browser, on a tablet, or a phone. Speed is often the snappiness of the application in response to what we’ve selected.
Bandwidth
TDS provides bandwidth as a service which in turn increases throughput (speed). We strive to provide more bandwidth than needed for the requested Internet speed to get you closer to the actual achievable rate. If more throughput is needed, we need to add more bandwidth.
Usage
If your bandwidth is full, then traffic will be delayed. If you have a lot of people at home using a lot of devices, you could fill up your path to the internet. At this point, you can either reduce the number of devices being used at the same time or upgrade your internet package to allow for more throughput (speed).
