Post by Romeo on Nov 5, 2011 2:30:58 GMT -5
posted by Hanna
Upload vs. Download, what’s the difference?
For the average user, download throughput is the primary metric used when considering the speed of your broadband package to measure the quality of your online experience. Download throughput represents how quickly you can receive information, such as reading email, browsing web pages, downloading content such as music, photos or applications as well as the quality and buffer rate when streaming video.
Because download is more meaningful for popular activities, residential Internet packages are typically asynchronous, and normally download is much faster than upload. An example: 5.0Mbps/1.5Mbps package means 5 megabits of downstream per second, while only a fraction of the upstream at 1.5 megabits per second. Packages vary widely with some having upload as low as 128Kbp/s or just about twice as fast as a dial-up connection. In a future post we will provide suggested download and upload speeds for a variety of online activities.
Naturally, upload speeds are very important if you are hosting information via a web or email server. This is because the upload throughput will determine how quickly other users can access information from your network. Your upload is another person’s download and vice versa. Most residential users aren’t hosting servers, so in that respect upload is typically not a big issue.
However, where upload throughput really matters is when you want to quickly share outbound content from your connection. Examples of these activities include sending an email and uploading photos or video to a website like Facebook, Flickr or YouTube. As more users have a higher need to send large emails and post higher resolution photos and videos to websites, upload is telling a larger part of the whole story. Another increasingly popular use of upload is peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs, such as BitTorrent, where upload is required to continually send content in order to have the privilege of downloading. VoIP, Video Conferencing and Online Gaming also require upload throughput for the bi-directional interactions.
So, depending on what you are looking to do with your broadband connection, be sure to consider upload speed carefully. Remember that although neither are particularly fast, even 256Kbp/s will allow you to upload twice as fast as 128Kbp/s and you’ll appreciate that the next time you upload pictures or send that big email attachment to a friend.