{"id":3261,"date":"2018-08-14T11:36:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T10:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cardonet.co.uk\/news\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2018-08-14T11:36:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T10:36:24","slug":"measuring-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I want to discuss another aspect of the internet, one which is shrouded in mystery and illusions and oft-obfuscated by the warlocks of marketing. A sinful place where facts are as rare as red squirrels and the truth is stretched like the rubber band of a slingshot \u2026 pointed at consumers.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is something we rarely notice until it goes wrong. Something we expect to work and something that can inspire intense rage and hatred in even the most even-keeled among us.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With the proliferation of smartphones, reddit and our a constant need to check instagram, the Internet today is more tightly woven into the fabric of our lives than ever. We use it for business and pleasure and some even experience withdrawal when they lose connection to it for too long. Humans in this country and others like it have become accustomed to it that they expect WiFi broadband or at least 3G everywhere they go. Like a lullaby, access to the web sedates the masses, it is only in its absence or malfunction that we begin to ask questions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong with the internet? Why can\u2019t I connect? Why is it so slow? Am I connected to the wrong one? Can I have the Wifi password? Who can I call to remedy this as soon as possible? Where the hell am I!?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

All very valid questions asked by very desperate people when their connection has dropped.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But despite being so integral to our lives, few know anything about it. I\u2019m not talking about how it works (I already wrote a piece about it here<\/strong><\/a>) but what it is measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean? And while we\u2019re at it, what even is a piece of internet measured in? Can it even be measured? What would be the point of doing so?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, luckily there is an answer to all the above questions. Unluckily, it\u2019s going to take the suspension of how we\u2019re used to measuring things, \u2014 if you haven\u2019t noticed by now, this is going to be an article on semantics \u2014 see, the thing with data is, it doesn\u2019t have dimensions, there\u2019s no weight or mass to it, it doesn\u2019t have a volume or length and lastly, it can\u2019t move in the classical sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Data is measured in bits, enormous reams of one\u2019s and zero\u2019s or on-and-offs, it really doesn\u2019t matter what you call them, in machines, data is binary there are two states, and everything you see before you is built from the complications that can be conjured from just two states. An increment of this data in a machine is called a bit<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>(short for binary digit), four bits is called a nibble (which luckily, no one measures anything in) and eight bits is called a byte. Bytes are important because traditionally, you would need eight bits to represent a character (like \u201cA\u201d or \u201c2\u201d) in a computer.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So the first thing I\u2019d urge you to keep in mind when plowing through the world of deceptive Internet jargon is that one byte is equal to eight bits. This is important because these two different measurements are often intentionally used to confuse customers, it also doesn\u2019t help that they\u2019re both shortened to the same letter, though generally it\u2019s lowercase-b for bits and uppercase-B for bytes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Data is stored in bits and bytes, but they\u2019re tiny, you can\u2019t really do much with a byte, to actually do anything interesting, you\u2019re going to need thousands, millions and billions. Luckily, the computer scientists who came up with all this accounted for that in the form of prefixes. Unfortunately even these are at risk of flawed understanding depending on interpretations. See, in the world of computers, there are those (like me) who insist that zero is the first number and that a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, because it just makes sense to me that way, machines are binary, why should we have to use base-10 when base-2 is simpler and just as effective, those that care will know the difference anyway\u2026 Right? Alas, tis not to be however, and there are many who find the 24 at the end of 1024 offensive and insist on a kilobyte being equal to 1000 bytes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How does this affect you? Ever buy a 16 gigabyte USB, pop it into your computer and wonder why you\u2019ve only got 15.625 GB of free space on it? Yeah, see this stuff matters, especially on phone\u2019s where a few megabytes can mean the difference between having nothing to do on the train home and streaming Netflix. And it only gets worse, the bigger you go. A difference of 24 bytes might be tiny but once you start measuring in gigabytes and terabytes, you could be losing more than a tenth in the conversion!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so here we are, finally, to the final frontier. \u201cSpeed.\u201d As I\u2019ve said before, it really doesn\u2019t make sense does it? Measuring internet with a word like \u201cspeed\u201d\u2026 In physics is defined as how much time it takes an object to travel over distance: Speed = Distance\/Time. I\u2019m sure you can guess the issues already.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with \u201cobject\u201d, well, as I\u2019ve already explained, data has no classical dimensions and you can\u2019t throw a ball that isn\u2019t there \u2014 nor can you eat a fish that hasn\u2019t been caught \u2014 thus data cannot have a speed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some could argue that the object in this situation could be the electrons or protons moving between computers. But even then the idea of \u201cinternet speed\u201d still makes no sense as there is no way to modulate the speed of light or electrons through a given medium without some serious intentional and heavy-duty lab-gear. It doesn\u2019t matter how much money you pay for internet, if you\u2019ve got copper wire connecting your house or business to the internet then the maximum \u201cspeed\u201d of your internet will always be equivalent to the drift velocity of an electron through said copper wire \u2014this can be altered by temperature, but ISPs have never and probably never will spend their money on cooling wires.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what do the companies actually mean by \u201cinternet speed\u201d? To crack this nut, we should look at how they measure it, usually, it\u2019s in megabits per second. Note here that it\u2019s megabits and not megabytes, and usually you\u2019ll see it written down as \u201cMb\u201d or \u201cmb\u201d, probably in a cynical attempt to confuse consumers into thinking the speeds are eight-times better than they actually all, after all, why would they measure storage and transmittance differently?<\/span><\/p>\n

What ISPs are actually talking about here is throughput. What\u2019s throughput you say? Consider a garden hose, if the water is the data, and the force with which the water flows out is equivalent to the \u201cspeed\u201d, then throughput is the girth of the hose. Yeah, I said it. Girth. That\u2019s what you\u2019re getting in a good internet connection. Good Girth. That\u2019s why it\u2019s considered faster, because the hole<\/i> is bigger. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So there you have it. The internet in measurements. Hope you enjoyed it!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I want to discuss another aspect of the internet, one which is shrouded in mystery and illusions and oft-obfuscated by the warlocks of marketing. A sinful place where facts are as rare as red squirrels and the truth is stretched like the rubber band of a slingshot \u2026 pointed at consumers.\u00a0 This is something<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[587,590],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bams-blog","tag-internet","tag-measuring"],"yoast_head":"\nMeasuring the Internet from Bam at Cardonet IT Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the Internet measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Measuring the Internet from Bam at Cardonet IT Services\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is the Internet measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-08-14T10:36:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"601\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"338\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"David\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Measuring the Internet from Bam at Cardonet IT Services","description":"What is the Internet measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Measuring the Internet from Bam at Cardonet IT Services","og_description":"What is the Internet measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean?","og_url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/","og_site_name":"News","article_published_time":"2018-08-14T10:36:24+00:00","og_image":[{"width":601,"height":338,"url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"David","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"David","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/"},"author":{"name":"David","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/0e2e2503098693fa8e44aebd97832d6b"},"headline":"Measuring the Internet","datePublished":"2018-08-14T10:36:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/"},"wordCount":1218,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png","keywords":["Internet","Measuring"],"articleSection":["Bam's Blog"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/","url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/","name":"Measuring the Internet from Bam at Cardonet IT Services","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png","datePublished":"2018-08-14T10:36:24+00:00","description":"What is the Internet measured in? Our phone contracts talk about data, our broadband companies talk about speed, what does it all mean?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/measuring-the-internet.png","width":601,"height":338,"caption":"Measuring the Internet"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/measuring-the-internet\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"News Home","item":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Measuring the Internet"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/","name":"News","description":"IT Services from Cardonet","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#organization","name":"Cardonet","url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/it-support-london-cardonet.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/it-support-london-cardonet.png","width":1920,"height":1080,"caption":"Cardonet"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/0e2e2503098693fa8e44aebd97832d6b","name":"David"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardonet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}