Speeeed!! Whether dodging traffic; rewatching (…for the third time) the worst audition of American Idol on YouTube; hoping on a workstation to send a file over to a colleague for editing; we always want things to move a little faster.
When it comes to technology infrastructure—obviously—the principle function of a network is the movement of data. Breaking that down further, the main parameters are: (1) data integrity (making sure data does not become corrupted) and the (2) speed with which that data moves from point A (i.e., your phone) to point B (a speaker within your network or a google photo server outside your network). Couple that with the exponential decrease in cost for modern, multi-gig connections and fiber optic lines……“speed” is probably the most considered factor when designing or upgrading an office, home, medical facility, or really anything that has a network connection.
This will be a two-article series meant to focus on (I) understanding internet consideration versus intended speed and (II) the architect of a network infrastructure’s affect on speed. Article I is more aimed help the home or small business user trying to understand not just the best Internet, but why that is. Article II is intended for your medium size business or commercial developer to understand why it is not just internet or even proper hardware only, but why network configuration can actually be even more important especially with concerns such as SIP, VPNs, remote video feeds or videography for smartphones.
Why does it Matter
The shift from an analog world and wired connections has really only been very recent. Audio devices communicated through analog signals and electrical pulses and watts; a garage door had a radio transmitter; printers where USB connected. And of course, your internet was piggybacked over long-ago buried analog lines (which fun fact, even today most internet in the USA is still sent over analog lines, but the signal is now digitally transmitted). If you were a restaurant with a speaker system or a teenager in their bedroom, audio did NOT wirelessly connect to some magical music streaming service, but was plugged in to your phone/iPod or a CD player and pumped music directly.
While digital is a no-contest superior connection method, it does bring certain speed realities and difficulties that previously would not have been a consideration. For example; most offices are converting to SIP-based telephony (i.e., VoIP) instead of those old- fashioned analog phone lines. If your network is slow, poorly designed, or simply overly
congested, things like Google searching or sending an e-mail might take an extra few seconds. Yet, no one might notice. However, take that same office but if you swap “sending an e-mail” for “making a phone call,” now that delay of even a second could very possibly make for an impossible phone conversation where both parties accidentally keep talking over each other.
Better network, faster Internet, fancy fiber connections…Is it necessary?
The first thing we always hear is, “I want the fastest internet speed!” In the past, the limitation of your incoming Internet connection was generally a matter of cost. Whether a business or a home, a better “internet package/tier” was usually available, and if you were a large enough business you could even pay to have more data lines dropped by a local service provider. At the end of the day, the primary limitation was what you were willing to spend.
Not only is this no longer the case, it is frankly where we see the most confusion and waste of expense. Unless you are a substantially large enough business, your residential home, your small office or even a medium sized business will be more than suited by the standard capacity offered by your local service provider. MOREOVER: Even a large office/building should understand that the capacity needed does not match the theoretical load of every single device, simultaneously connected at full demand. For example,
I recently worked with a K-8 private school that had a population of around four hundred kids. Add teachers to that, staff and maintenance workers and then even occasionally more if you had a lot of parents to a conference night. The body count could pile up. Then too, it was frankly quite dizzying just the number of phones they had. “On paper,” it sounds like a lot when your campus (i.e., office) has to support five hundred or more people and several hundred phones! This school was paying through the roof for phone service and then even more for other network features. Despite the “theoretical capacity”—every room having a phone and hallways and gyms having several for safety reasons—the reality is that almost none of them were ever used. It is easy to think you need massive “capacity” if you think of every device, but in reality it was never more than a few used at any one time.
Consider too, most kids were not allowed phones during the day and laptops were only given WiFi access for specific tasks, so despite the number of bodies on campus even their network and internet needs were surprisingly low.
But don’t I need More
Every time I see Internet offered on the residential side, it is always also accompanied by some ridiculous comparison that says something like, “Tier I is if it is just you, Tier II if you want to stream a few devices, Tier III if you have several people in the home,” et cetera. The
truth is that unless you have a specific concern you need to address, almost always the absolute lowest Tier is more than enough.
If using an AppleTV, Roku bult-in Smart TV or whatever, the highest quality stream for your TV will not be more than 20Mbps. And honestly, that is way over compensating. Multiply that usage by a few TVs and even throw in a couple kids watching a YouTube video. Your smart connected devices like Alexa or a light switch require almost no data and browsing the Internet and sending e-mails likewise is miniscule. A 1 GIG line is 1,000 Mbps: Why is your service provider telling you to bump up from 300 Mbps to 500 to 1 GIG or even more if at your busiest moments you are never coming close to saturating your Internet line?
Now are there more nuances? Yes, of course. Could you have a very specific streaming need or maybe you are a big XBOX or PS5 gamer with frequent need to download huge amounts of gameplay files or updates. If you are in that category then maybe a higher package makes sense. But even then, I recently had a client ask if his son needs a 5Gbps line for his PS5? Tricky spot to force me to betray either the father or the son, but honestly that leans more on preference than a yes or no. I could give him the answer his son wants, but personally I feel that is big coin to jump up only to save what is probably a combined total of a couple minutes of download time a week. Now if you are the gamer and you pay the bills then splurge and get what you want!, but know it might not be “necessary.”
Practical Advise
Particularly here in South Florida (the exception being in areas of the country that are more rural), when considering internet service providers it might sound like crazy advice, but the best place is usually to consider the lowest tier as your intended need. Then, only if there is a specific concern, you can bump up. At my personal residence, AtCt is the default provider and the lowest tier is 400 Mbps. It serves me, my wife and and our kids, and it handles all our smart and video devices, a whole-home automation system, a home server that connects very securely to our office, and I do have two digital work phone lines but I do not have any security cameras. A few months ago AtCt bumped me for free to a 1 GIG line for three months. Of course, just for fun, I pulled the trigger and ran multiple tests.
Admittedly, maybe on some large downloads from the office server I could tell a difference, but honestly, when the promotion ended and I was bumped back down, I did not even notice and my family never even knew we were bumped up in the first place.
Proving a point: Even though I knew what the end result would be, even I thought I would find it fun having such “faster” internet connection. Even I was suckered in to the allure and thought I would subconsciously notice. But really, it provided very little tangible benefits. Even for a gamer, the difference is convenience not need. Your trigger speed will
not increase because your internet is faster! For a business user who might be running a web server or have specific needs, then of course that is different. But oddly enough, most small to medium sized businesses actually produce less network traffic than your average size home serving a family and a couple kids.
Money and more Money
Service providers keep upping the available internet packages. As a certified network engineer, it tickles the child in me and I am ecstatic; honest. I am hardly hating on speed and I know there are those home enthusiast out there who want 10GIG lines to rival the NSA. Practically speaking, it also gives good future proofing to our nation’s infrastructure and we might as well build in that capacity while civil projects go underway. But we have reached a speed saturation point in internet packages, and they are merely offered more as a money grab by service providers as opposed to a real need on the average user.
Hey, at the end of the day if you take my advise and realize I am crazy and you need more speed, log on to that Xfinity or Verizon account and take two minutes to upgrade to the higher package. You have not lost anything, but you potentially have saved a lot of money. (Now if only that cup of coffee at the café where you browse the internet was not so expensive!).