How Much Speed Do I Need?
The Mission of the NLWI Network
North Lauderdale Water Association is building the North Lauderdale Wireless Internet (NLWI) network to provide broadband connectivity to rural families and businesses that need it for distance learning, telemedicine, and telework during this national quarantine and beyond. Our goal is to deliver broadband to as many underserved people as possible. While the network can deliver higher speeds up to 100 Mbps in many areas, the truth is that most homes will be happily served by our regular plan delivering 25Mbps.
Marketing v. Reality — it's the minimum that matters
Those who market connectivity services like cell phones and cable like to mention maximum possible speed on their network. However, what is actually most important to the user is the minimum speed they will experience in trying to use the network for their daily tasks. It is slow minimum speed or intermittent connectivity that causes the pain and frustration. A super high maximum speed that a subscriber only sees if online at 2 am is no compensation for seeing the buffering icon while trying to do homework or connect for a telemedicine appointment or stream a movie during prime time.
Why FCC defined "Broadband" as 25 x 3 Mbps
Many people are surprised to learn that most everything a home or small business requires from the internet can be done smoothly with 25 Mbps downlink and 3 Mbps uplink. This is why the Federal Communications Commission for many years defined "broadband" as 25 x 3 Mbps. The North Lauderdale Water Association main office operated for 2 years with a 25 x 1.5 Mbps fixed wireless connection to test the technology. It proved far superior to the 6 Mbps AT&T DSL connection we had previously. This speed was adequate to remotely access our digital mapping system, monitor our water plants, and stream 9 security cameras, plus do the daily business of a firm with 4,000 customers. Here are some common online activities and the speeds they require:
Required Download Speed:
1. Stream a song 0.3 Mbps
2. Make a Zoom or Skype call 1.5 Mbps
3. Stream a standard definition movie 3.5 Mbps
4. Stream an HD movie 15.0 Mbps
5. Online Gaming 3.0 Mbps (<100ms ping)
6. Point of Sale (POS) transaction 0.1 Mbps
Gamers
Hardcore gamers are led to believe they need 100 Mbps connections for smooth gaming and rapid reaction times. The amount of data a game actually transmits up and receives down is much less than a video stream. What most affects gameplay is the lag between the game server and the individual players, and this is determined by the latency of the network, often referred to as "ping" for the test used to measure this delay. Data loss (packet loss) due to a poor quality or intermittent connection will also ruin gaming, just as it will any streaming content. A good game experience requires a solid 3 Mbps connection and a ping of 100 milliseconds or less.
Online Merchants
A Point of Sale (POS) transaction using a card-swipe or chip-reading device is only 10-50 kB of data depending on whether a signature is captured or not. Because the data file is so small, speed is not an issue, but a reliable connection is paramount.
VPN
Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service will unavoidably slow down network traffic and increase ping to some degree because it is encrypting all data and adding hops (distance) to the path it takes. A rule of thumb is a 33% decrease in speed and a 100% increase in ping.
Summary
The bottom line is that an honest 25 x 3 Mbps connection that delivers this speed 24-7 is fine for most homes and small businesses. Such a connection can happily support multiple people streaming audio and video content on mobile devices such as phones and iPads, online gaming, and posting to social media, all while simultaneously streaming an HD movie to a single TV. Higher speeds will not help gamers unless their connection is saturated with other users. Someone like a software developer, graphic artist, or radiologist who needs to frequently upload and download huge files, or a business with many employees, multiple streaming video screens, or large online traffic volume may genuinely require more capacity, and for these we have our 50x3 and 100x10 Mbps plans.