Whats good internet speed

Question

hey i just got my wirless internet and its speed is 500 is thats a good speed to load movies from youtub.com, or is it still a slow speed and lots of waiting

Answer 1

For some 500 is old, that is of course if you refer to "kb" in the speed terms.

A reasonable speed these days will be between 2Mb (2000kb) and 8Mb (8000kb).

If you have just moved over from a modem dialup at 56kb, then enjoy the speed...upgrade when you're ready.

Answer 2

It's not that bad though... But I think 1mb, or 2mb are better... If you to download something... I recommend 2mb... It's fast...  

Answer 3

If it's kb then 500 is slow.  Most services offer about 8Mb max (though you normally won't get that much, I get 6.5Mb) but in this day-and-age, if you are in a town or city, you should get 2Mb at least.  One thing to check is whether that's your upload or download speed - it could well be upload as this is usually slower (hence the A in ADSL - asynchronous) and is often 500kb - my one is up to 8Mb down and 500kb or 1Mb (I can't remember which) up.

Answer 4

If you are talking about 500KB/sec download, that is fast; youtube and nearly any form of streaming media will work perfectly fine.  If you are talking 500kb/sec that is kinda slow; you can still view youtube, but some forms of streaming media may not perform as well.  

The difference is KB is kilo-bytes, while kb is kilo-bits (notice when it's bits, the kb is not capitalized).  Generally, each byte equals eight bits.*  So at 500KB/sec, that's 4000kb/sec!  That is about mid-range cable internet speeds.  While 500kb/sec is only 62.5KB/sec which is slightly faster then dial-up modem speeds; ouch.

For a better metric, you might want to run a speed test which will report your speed in kb/sec (sometimes labeled as kpbs).  Typically anything over 1500kb/sec will suffice for streaming media.  This website http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest has a list of available speed tests.

One last thing I want to mention.  When downloading files through your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox), it will report using KB/sec.

*read about ambiguity of the definition of a kilobyte.