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Connection speeds and speed testing
Please refer to the published article for general information
regarding the
connection speed requirements. Here you can find details on some
topics
that are only briefly described in the article:
About bits and bytes and transfer rates:
Bits and bytes measure electronic
information. A byte is always 8 bits. Communication speeds are
usually
measured in bits per second while many computer operations are
measured
in bytes per second. The theoretical maximum speed of an internet
connection
is for instance often reported in megabits/sec, while the actual
momentaneous
transfer rate over an internet connection is reported as
kilobytes/sec. A "56k"
modem is 56 kilobits and a "2m" xDSL connection is 2 megabits per
second.
Over a 2 megabit connection around 200 kilobytes of data could
theoretically
be transferred per second.
The recommended minimum connection speed:
In the published article we
report 2 megabits/sec as a satisfactory connection speed for virtual
microscopy.
This is however an arbitrary cut-off, and the virtual slides can be
viewed even
with a phone modem. For a professional microscopist this will
however be
frustrating.
The connection speed test:
The connection speed test is very simple. A
standard jpg-image is transferred and the time to complete the
operation is
measured. The test therefore measures the current transfer rate
between the
user's computer and our image server in Helsinki. Even if you have a
very fast
connection to the internet, it does not automatically mean that the
transfer rate
will be high. The transfer rate depends on the ip-distance (the
complexity of the
route of the data on the internet), and the current load on the
server and on your
network.
Measured connection speeds:
We continuously collect measured transfer rates
from around the world. We will soon here publish a connection speed
world map.
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