Bandwidth & Connection Statistics

Bits versus bytes

In talking about measurements, there are a couple of things that I need to make sure we are clear on, and there are some misconceptions I want to make sure we clean up here first.

Most of us are probably familiar with a bit, which is just a single one or zero. And we are probably familiar with a byte, a series of ones and zeros, or specifically eight bits. A byte is eight bits. The way we represent this when we label things with abbreviations is that a bit is a little b and a byte is a big B.

The misconception that I want to clear up is that storage is usually measured in bytes, versus speeds of connection, which are usually measured in bits. Let me give you an example of that. If you have a connection, maybe you have a connection to the internet that is 100 megabits per second. So that is capital M, lowercase bps. Versus your storage: when you get storage, you are probably getting something like 500 gigabytes of data. So generally we measure our speeds in bits and we measure our storage in bytes.

Another way of stating this: right here I have eight bits, and so if I measure this, let's say I transferred eight bits across a line in 1 second, then this would be 8 bits per second, which would be an incredibly low speed. Hopefully at this point in time we do not have a connection that is 8 bits per second, where you are communicating at a much faster rate, but this just puts it in perspective that it is bits per second. Of course, our speeds are much faster, so we generally measure things in kilobits per second, megabits per second, gigabits per second, and sometimes terabits per second.

What makes a good connection

Then we get into our original question again. What makes a good internet connection? Probably the immediate thing that pops into our mind is bandwidth. But there are more than just that as a measurement of how good a connection is, so let's go through some of those measurements of how we would measure what makes a good connection.

One of the big ones is uptime. What if our internet connection is constantly going down? That is going to be a big problem, especially in our businesses. So I would say one of the big ones is just uptime.

The one we are probably most familiar with is just bandwidth, and how much bandwidth we have, how much bits per second we can get through a line. Although strictly speaking that is a good measurement, there is also some consideration that we have to have for overhead. Different types of technologies will require a different amount of overhead, different signaling bits and different things that go across the line as well, that take away from the main bandwidth that we actually have to utilize. So we have a couple more specific measurements that we have to consider, not just bandwidth.

Bandwidth, throughput and goodput

So what are some of these measurements that we have to think about? Overhead would be the header, the footer, the data that goes across for signaling, all of this extra stuff.

When we are talking about bandwidth, the bandwidth is the connection, what the connection total can handle. So for instance, maybe this connection right here that we have can handle a total of 64 kilobits per second. That is what that line is capable of handling.

Then we have some signaling that happens with this line right here. The line has to maintain a certain level of connectivity, and maybe it is a phone line or something that uses up some of the signaling capability. Let's use an example of 8 kilobits per second for that. When we subtract the 8 kilobits per second, then we come up with 56 kilobits per second, and that is how much throughput we have. The throughput is what is available for the devices to communicate back and forth. So that could be significantly different than the overall bandwidth we have.

So we have got the throughput, which is what the devices can communicate back and forth through. Then we also have goodput. The goodput now takes into consideration that not all data that we send across to this other device is going to be good. Let's say we have been sending 56 kilobits per second, but half of it gets over there and it is not great data, and that data has to be resent. Now you are going to have to take that into consideration. So maybe our actual throughput right here is 26 kilobits per second that we actually have that can make it through this connection right here.

So you have got to take into consideration things like signaling and traffic that has to be resent, and those types of situations that we have here also, because it could severely hinder your connection speed. It is not measured purely by strictly bandwidth.

Delay and latency

Another one of those measurements is delay and latency, something that gamers are really familiar with, because delay and latency can cause real problems when you are talking about games like first-person shooters.

Delay would be, if I have a message here, maybe I have a series of ones and zeros that are being sent, the delay would be how long it takes from the time this device sends out this message to the time that this device receives the message. That would be delay. Versus latency would be how long it takes for the full message to get over to the other side. So that is delay and latency, very similar in how it manifests itself on your network, but those are two measurements that you would want to be concerned with as well.

Jitter

Jitter is yet another measurement, and jitter can be really detrimental not just to gaming but to things like video and audio conferencing. Jitter is how consistent the data is coming across the line. There can be a little delay with video as it goes across the line, but if it is coming in inconsistently, so maybe you get a burst of some of the information and then there is this long gap of no information and another burst of information, then that can cause a problem as you are making a connection with this video conferencing. That is where we get some digitization of the image, or it kind of sounds really garbled as the audio comes across. So jitter is that consistency with the data that is being sent across the line.

Bursting

Another measurement that you may not be familiar with is bursting. A lot of our connections have this limit of what speeds can be sent across these connections, but there are some types of connections that will allow us to go above that, and that is called bursting.

A lot of our traffic, when we initiate a network connection, sometimes we need a big chunk of data and then it takes a little bit of data to maintain. For instance, video conferencing. When we initiate a video conference, we need a lot of information up front to establish that connection and that image and the sound, but then the amount of data tapers and is not as great to maintain that connection.

So some of our internet service providers allow us to do bursting, which goes above what our connection speed allows us, or what we purchased, and it allows us to go above that for a certain duration. So there is a volume, how much above that we can go, and for how long we can go for. A lot of our connections will allow a certain amount of bursting.

Communication errors

Getting back to our bandwidth and throughput and goodput, I am going to bring it back to communication errors. There are things that happen like collisions on our networks, or there is some sort of errors. There are things that will happen on our network that will bring down the quality and allow us not to get our full bandwidth, and it may or may not be a fault of the connection. So communication errors is a problem as well. That is another thing that we have to consider when we are evaluating a connection.

So there you have it, some measurements of connection beyond the typical just bandwidth that we are used to seeing. We talked about the difference between a bit and a byte, which you probably are familiar with, but just realizing it is bits per second, usually not bytes per second, when we are measuring speeds. And then also the difference between the kilobit, megabit, gigabit and terabit is measured in magnitudes of 1,024, not a thousand. So those are just some misconceptions that we cleared up there. And then we talked about a lot of different connection measurements like jitter and latency and bandwidth and throughput and goodput that make a difference in our connection, that we will need to make sure we take into consideration when we are purchasing a connection or measuring how well a connection is.