Tech tips: Do you need the speed of light?

A key metric when choosing business-grade Internet is bandwidth, which is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). Computers describe information using zeros and ones, and these data need to be pushed along an Internet network connection in chunks (so-called “packets”) when they talk to each other. As the most basic unit, the zero or one is called a “bit,” and a megabit contains slightly more than a million of them.

South of the border, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a handy chart that indicates how much bandwidth you’ll need for various applications.

Two Mbps is acceptable for basic email and web surfing, the chart says. It may even support a high-demand application, such as video conferencing or streaming high-definition video. Running more than one of these high-demand applications entails a “high use” model, for which the FCC recommends bandwidth of up to 15 Mbps.

But those numbers are for a single user, and chances are you work in an office with multiple colleagues. The same FCC chart recommends an Internet connection of more than 15 Mbps for a high-use model with four concurrent users.

Internet performance isn’t just about download capacity; upload bandwidth is important, too. For your computer to communicate with another on the Internet, the computers have to talk to each other. On most residential and low-end business Internet connections, the upload bandwidth will be far less than the download.

The required bandwidth will be determined by the type of application you are using. For example, Vonage, a popular voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony service provider with a Canadian presence, recommends 85 kilobits per second (that’s 0.85 Mbps) in both upload and download bandwidth for an Internet phone call. You’ll need to multiply that by the number of concurrent VoIP calls that you expect your team to be making from your office.

For a true picture of your Internet speed, you’ll want to ask your Internet service provider (ISP) about another metric: latency.

When an ISP describes bandwidth in its marketing brochure, it invariably calls it “speed.” But bandwidth really refers to the “capacity” of the Internet connection – how many bits of information can be pushed along the line at once.

This distinction between speed and capacity is important. An Internet connection may be very “wide,” or able to take many bits at once. But what if those bits move very slowly? It’s similar to Toronto’s Highway 401, which carries between 12 and 16 lanes of traffic. That’s a lot of cars at once, but traffic still often moves at a crawl.

On the Internet, a traffic jam is known as “high latency,” and that’s a bad thing. Look for latency numbers of less than 150 milliseconds (ms) from your ISP connection. Less is far better.

What causes such traffic jams? It depends on what kind of business connection you have. A lot of businesses will typically ask for an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), which uses a loop of copper to run the Internet around the local neighbourhood.

ADSL can work well, but it also relies on the ISP to provide enough bandwidth to the local neighbourhood. Everyone else in the vicinity shares that copper loop for their Internet access, so if the neighbourhood’s’ teenagers suddenly begin downloading Bittorrent movies at 4:30 in the afternoon, you may see your video call suffer. The other downside for ADSL is that upload speeds typically are far lower than download speeds, and sometimes can dip below one Mbps.

An alternative is symmetrical digital subscriber line (SDSL), an aging technology with some benefits over ADSL, including lack of contention – SDSL users don’t compete for space on a local loop. Another benefit is identical upload and download speeds.

But there are downsides to SDSL. It often is far slower than ADSL, often peaking at two Mbps. For many modern businesses with even a handful of employees, that won’t be enough. In any case, ISPs have taken measures to improve their Internet bandwidth, creating business-grade Internet ADSL connections that can top 50 Mbps or more.

Just beware that the advertised figures often are best estimates. Use speed measuring sites such as www.speedtest.net to test the real bandwidth and latency measurements of your Internet connection.

If you’re lucky enough to be inside a fibre-optic coverage area, that’s another option. ADSL and SDSL use copper wiring to move your packets of data through to their local switching points, which act as a launchpad, to be whisked off across the Internet.

The trip between your office and the local switching point is called the “last mile,” and companies have begun using fibre-optic cables to move packets along this journey. Fibre-optic cable uses light beams instead of electronic current to move data around, and thus is far faster. Premises installing fibre-optic connections can expect speeds of 175 Mbps or more.

Finally, there’s the private jet of business Internet connections: the leased line. This may be copper in many cases, but you’re not sharing this line with anyone else. You’ll get the same latency and bandwidth both ways, with predictable and low latency. But a leased line can run to thousands of dollars per month and really is suitable only for larger enterprises.

Higher-performance ADSL will suit most financial advisors’ needs. The exact performance you need will depend on what kinds of applications you’re running, and how many video calls you’re likely to perform with clients.

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