Understanding Your Internet Speed

Find answers to common questions

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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).

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