When you’re looking at the various Internet plans an ISP provider has to offer, you may be wondering how fast each speed is. If the ISP provider suggests that you go with a 10Mpbs speed, you might ask yourself if it’s fast enough for you. The reality is that the answer will vary from person to person – from situation to situation.
Is 10Mbps fast enough for what you need? How can you know for sure? The answer stems from one thing – what are you looking to do on the Internet?
Residential Usage
If your goal is to browse the Internet, look up the weather, read blogs or articles or answer emails, then 10Mbps is more than sufficient. This speed will bring up a webpage quickly and smoothly. Your emails will be sent at lightning fast speed.
If you want to stream music or play games online, 10Mpbs is more than enough for your residential usage. While 1080p videos will run with 10Mpbs, you may find faster load times with 720p videos. And, it’s also a good enough speed for downloading size of a regular size.
Now, your Internet will slow down when you have to share bandwidth with others. If your spouse is watching a movie online and you’re trying to watch something as well, you may experience a lag in the speed. This can also happen when making real-time video calls through a messaging app or program.
Business Usage
For businesses, 10Mbps isn’t very fast and can hinder the productiveness of the company. It’s shareable on five computers total but only if everyone is using it for emails, uploading/downloading small files or is browsing the Internet for information.
If you’re constantly downloading large files, you share documents among the staff, or there are more than five people in the office, then 10Mpbs won’t go very far.
How Fast Is 10Mbps?
10Mbps doesn’t mean much if you talk about it in technical terms – such as 10 megabits of data per second. Try to imagine how much that is. It’s why 10Mbps is measured in other ways. For instance, if you had a 2Mbps plan, it would take up to four hours to download a 3GB movie.
If you move to a 10Mbps plan, that same movie will take 40 minutes. If you have the money to spend on a higher speed, a 25Mbps plan cuts that download time even further… to 15 minutes.
Bear in mind that this is not taking into consideration the TCP/IP overheads, which let you connect to other computers and can boost the download time tremendously.
Is 10Mbps Fast Enough For You?
If you’re just doing run-of-the-mill Internet tasks – checking email, reading blogs, etc. – then yes, it’s more than enough. However, if you’re business uses the Internet heavily or is constantly downloading large applications, then you’ll want a higher speed plan to compensate.
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