How To Accelerate Your Internet Fast

A practical guide to Bandwidth Management and Optimisation using Open Source Software

over the globe are beginning to realise that in order to effectively participate in
the global marketplace, they need access to the global communications network.
But superhighways aren't built overnight. As with any major undertaking to
build infrastructure, extending fast network connections to all of the ends of the
earth takes time. Technologies such as VSAT make it possible to install an
Internet connection just about anywhere, particularly in the absence of existing
wired infrastructure. While this does extend the footprint of the Internet to otherwise
unreachable places, the capacity of the connection provided is far from
infinite. The cost of these connections is also quite high for many organisations.
This often leads to the practice of stretching an insufficient network connection
to serve many users simultaneously.
Bandwidth, throughput, latency, and speed
There are a few technical words used to describe how fast an Internet connection
may go. Users often find these terms confusing, so it's best to be clear
about their definitions from the beginning.
• Bandwidth refers to a measure of frequency ranges, typically used for digital
communications. The "band" part of broadband is short for bandwidth,
meaning that the device uses a relatively wide range of frequencies. In recent
years, the term bandwidth has been popularly used to refer to the capacity
of a digital communications line, typically measured in some number
of bits per second. In its popular usage, you might read that a T1 provides a
theoretical maximum "bandwidth" of 1.544 Mbps.
While some purists insist that we should speak of capacity when talking
about data transfer speeds and bandwidth when talking about frequency
ranges, the popular usage of the term "bandwidth" has been reinforced by
years of product marketing and misleading documentation. There simply is
no going back now. Therefore, we will use the terms bandwidth and capacity
interchangeably in this book.
• Throughput describes the actual amount of information flowing through a
connection, disregarding protocol overhead. Like bandwidth, it is expressed
in some number of bits per second. While a T1 may provide 1.544 Mbps between
the endpoints, the protocol spoken on the physical line reduces the
effective throughput to about 1.3 Mbps. When you factor in the additional
overhead of Internet protocols, the available throughput is even less. When
you measure the actual usage of a connection or perform a "speed test" on a
line, you are measuring throughput.
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