Picking Up Speed

This week we got our high speed internet upgraded.  For many years we have had the high speed basic at 1.5Mb/sec, and we got it upgraded to 10Mb/sec.  The speed test showed we have 10.3 Mb/sec download and 850 kb/sec upload (advertised as 800 kb/sec.)     These data rate units are kilobits per second and megabits per second.  A byte is 8 bits, but to get the effective download speed for a given file size it is easier to estimate by dividing by ten.   For example on the upgraded internet a 60 MB file downloads in about a minute.    

One of the noticeable differences has been with my iPad.  I have National Geographic and Popular Science subscriptions which are huge downloads.  June issue of NG was 259 MB and PS was 517 MB.  With our basic internet the National Geographic download would come to a standstill and timeout on an error.  After the upgrade it down loaded in about 6 minutes.    

We are also looking forward to trying out the faster internet with Skype.  We were getting a faster internet service and better connection on Skype on my iPad using Elaine's iPhone as a hotspot on 3G at Waskesiu, than on our basic internet at home.  

We have come a long way since our first dial up modem at 300 baud (comparable to bits per second.)   It took  about 5 minutes to fill one screen of text.  We then moved up to 2400 bits/sec and then to 56k bits/sec before finally going to the basic high speed.  We must have had more patience in those days.