you have seen the adverts. upto 8 meg, up to 20 meg.
chances are you will hardly ever hit those kind of speeds. in fact i would go as far to say that most people think they have those speeds already and are totally unaware that they are probably only touching 15%-20% of a decent connection. add to that fact hidden programs, virus and bots uploading/downloading things in the background and you can understand why people get frustrated with 'the internet' even before you start talking about 'social media making' - we need to educate.
i'm finding out that most people in a rural location have very very poor internet connectivity. if i'm to prove that having hi-speed internet connectivity in an area is valuable we need to educate a few people about the difference in upload/download speeds and connectivity in general. until people experience the value of what can be done with an internet connection of a certain speed and what it can open them up too, trying to explain social media to people who do not have the technology in place to upload without frustration will always fall on deaf ears.
finding out your upload and download speed as a basic rule of thumb your internet connection is split into two parts. the download part (which is often faster than the upload) and the upload (the side of your internet connection that sends things up to the internet) - now most of the time for surfing the internet and listening to music and videos your going to be using the download side of your internet connection - the faster that is, the higher the number the faster your downloading of content will be. this is the side of your connection that the majority of people will use. the upload side of your internet connection is often a lot slower than your download speed (you should look into why this is on wikipedia if interested) - uploading is often used for sending - so email, submitting forms and searches and obviously pushing media to store on the internet. this often can be the biggest problem for media makers in that it can be frustrating to send media to the internet due to the time constraints of having to plan ahead of time or scheduling this to happen. A lot of people do not have the time and give in at this stage because of the extra effort required to publish and create media content for the web. For checking your internet connection i would check out
http://speedtest.net to find out your upstream/download speeds and
http://www.pingtest.net for testing other issues that might be effecting your internet line.
you and the local exchange lots of things effect how good your actual connection can be but one of the main ones is your distance away from your local exchange and
what kinds of connectivity that exchange has been enabled for. I'm quite lucky in that my exchange is adsl2 enabled and i'm not too far away from it. i get around 6meg download and just over 1meg upload - for me, for sending media it is 'ok'
reboot that router need to do some video chatting online via skype with your relatives abroad? - reboot that router for 10 minutes before doing so may just refresh your internet connection to make it more smooth for you. leaving a router on over night is not only an environmental concern - if your not running a server from home then you really should look at switching it off.
check your congestion and ratios most people take the basic, cheapest package when it comes to broadband but often people really need a lot more than they get. if your working an internet business from home you really should be looking at the business offering as they often have better ratios in peak time and getting some kind of level of support is often a lot quicker - i've also noticed you tend to get more detailed status reports. trust me, it is worth the extra cash.
I'll be releasing a series of videos over the course of this month regarding what a nice, chunky internet connection could enable you and the businesses and community around you to do that your current connection probably cannot. i hope you will enjoy the videos and will show you that by bringing high speed internet connectivity to an area can change the dynamics of the community.
