4. Bandwidth speeds

There is an old (but very good) film called "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise as a fighter pilot. During the film he declares, "I feel the neeeed... The neeeed for speed! "

Well, the internet is a bit like that. If you use a low bandwidth connection, then it can seem a very slow experience as you wait for your pages, music and video streams to download.

Modern internet links are measured in Kilobits per second (Kbps) i.e thousands of bits per second. Or, in Megabits (Mbps) - Millions of bits per second.

These are the bandwidths of some connections to the Internet:

• 300 - 9600 bits per second : Obsolete teletype and early modems.
• 56 kilobits per second: Bandwidth of dial-up modem (some people in remote areas still have to use these)
• 64 - 128Kbps: ISDN, obsolete, replaced by ADSL broadband.
• 512kbps - 20Mbps: Bandwidth of most UK home ADSL internet links (in 2014 the average broadband speed was 18 Mb/sec : source ofcom report)
• 20Mbps - 100Mbps: Superfast broadband (as of 2014, 27% have this in the UK)

This is all very well, but what does it feel like to have these different bandwdths? Try the movie on the next page.