What is a fast internet speed | MB/s vs mbps | How Comcast Measures Internet Speed or Bandwidth

What is a Fast internet speed?

Lets face it. Everyone wants a fast internet connection, but choosing an internet provider (ISP) is difficult enough without trying to understand what speed and plan to go with. Cable and phone companies selling internet services often try to make comparing plans as difficult as possible.

The Internet speed for you

So what is considered fast internet connection speed? The term fast internet is relative. The average user simply browsing the internet and downloading the occasional album or movie from iTunes would be well suited with a 20 Mbps broadband internet connection. However, a music or video producer collaborating with other artists via the internet may require faster internet speed to make collaborations across networks and cities as quick as possible. It is important to have a general understanding of the terminology and notation associated with broadband internet speeds, and which speed is most appropriate/economical for your needs.

Do I need a faster internet speed?

If you are an average user with broadband internet, odds are your current speed is adequate for your needs.  A minimum of 0.5 Mbps is required for streaming the lowest quality video from Netflix. Additionally Netflix recommends a broadband connection of at least 5 Mbps download speed for streaming HD video.

Do I need to check my internet speed?

When in doubt check it out. There are various online tools that will perform an internet speed test freely and quickly. One of the most popular and well used internet speed checker can be found at Speedtest.net.

Mbps vs MBps

Safari download in MB/s

When copying, transferring, or downloading files you may have noticed that the download speed is monitored in either KB/s or MB/s. KB/s or Kilobytes per second is quite different than kbps when comparing speed. The lower case kbps stands for kilo bits per second. MB/s or Megabytes per second is also quite different than mbps or megabits per second.

Upper case "B" represents a byte which is made up of 8 bits (lower case b).

Good Internet Provider Speed

Most internet service providers, like Comcast/Xfinity, measure their internet speeds in bits per second, often mega bits per second (Mbps). When trying to figure out which speed is right for your needs this can become confusing.

A 30 Mbps internet connection actually equates to 3.75 MB/s (mega bytes per second). Since each byte contains 8 bits, dividing the advertised speed in mega bits per second by 8 bits will give you the speed in bytes per second or B/s.

fcc.gov

Which Internet is Faster?

In order to be sure you actually get faster internet and find the best internet provider, look at the chart above. In 2013 the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau published "A Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S." Actual vs advertised speed varies from ISP to ISP. At 15 Mbps Comcast provided a little over 100% of the advertised speed however, some ISPs performed well above their advertised speed. i.e. Verizon Fios.




Sources:
Wikipedia
FCC.gov

Mount a Samba smb shared folder Ubuntu

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AskUbuntu

SMB Sharing

One of the easiest and most common ways to connect, network, and share files and folders between Ubuntu and Windows computers is to configure a Samba File Server on the Ubuntu computer. This method of file sharing makes it easy for anyone to learn how to share files between computers using linux systems. Samba may not be included with the Ubuntu package but can easily be downloaded from the software center or using the apt-get command. The Samba file server is configured initially to share files with any user on the network without requiring a password, however password required access can be configured.

For Ubuntu operating systems before 12.10 you have to use the "classic" syntax to identify the server and share to the client computer. You can not mount a folder within a share as though it is a share, you should mount the share and then access the folder within it. A symbolic link to the folder can be made if necessary. When you run  smbmount,mount -t smbfs  or similar remote mount commands as  root (for example with sudo)  you need to specify the username on the server (unless it's actually  root , which is unlikely and, if the server runs a Unix system, not recommended.

Follow the instructions below to install Samba SMB:

Search Software Center for "samba."

Click Install, Enter your administrative password, and wait for Samba to install.

Search for Samba in dashboard.

Open Samba and choose a folder to share by typing in the path or browsing.

Choose the Access tab at the top of the window and allow access to the shared folder for everyone or only specified users.

Mount a Samba (smb) Shared Folder on Local Network:

Open the home folder and Browse Network.

Find the computer or device sharing the folder.

Double-click on the folder you would like to mount.

Mount Samba shared folder in Terminal:

So first, you'll create a folder (mount point) for the share:

 sudo mkdir /mnt/projects 

(This is assuming you want to create it in /mnt. It's become more common to create all globally accessible mount points that aren't part of your Ubuntu system itself in /media instead of /mnt but it's fine to use /mnt if you like.)

Then use a command like this to mount the share:

 sudo smbmount //192.168.2.28/projects /mnt/projects -o user=USERNAME 

Replace USERNAME with the username on the Samba server that you need to log in as. You'll be prompted for your password. You can specify your password on the command-line too (with -o password=PASSWORD) but it will appear in cleartext in the Terminal and will go into your command history, so you probably don't want to do that.

You'll notice that I've used smbmount but mount -t smbfs or mount -t cifs (or mount.cifs) should work just as well, if you prefer.

Now smb://192.168.2.28/projects's contents are accessible in /mnt/projects. If you need to be able to access the contents of smb://192.168.2.28/projects/myProject in/mnt/projects/myProject, you can create a symbolic link:

 sudo ln -s /mnt/projects/myProject /mnt/myProject 

For readers of Ubuntu 12.10 and later:

 

You must use mount.cifs or mount -t cifs(smbmount and mount -t smbfs are no longer provided). These commands will work on earlier systems too.

Related:

• What are PPA's
• Edit and Create Custom Launcher Icons
• Remove "Unlock Keyring" Prompt: Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10
• Add new user as sudo user via command line
• Enable Hibernation: Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10+

Source: StackExchange: AskUbuntu Original Author: Eliah Kagan

Add directory ~bin to PATH Ubuntu

• PATH
• ~bin
• Create a Private ~bin
• Create ~bin Directory

What is $PATH

$PATH is an environment variable used to lookup commands. The ~ is your home directory, so ~/bin will be /home/user/bin; it is a normal directory.

What is bin

When you run "ls" in a shell, for example, you actually run the /bin/ls program; the exact location may differ depending on your system configuration. This happens because /bin is in your $PATH.

$ echo $PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:...
$ which ls     # searches $PATH for an executable named "ls"
/bin/ls
$ ls           # runs /bin/ls
bin  desktop  documents  downloads  examples.desktop  music  pictures  ...
$ /bin/ls      # can also run directly
bin  desktop  documents  downloads  examples.desktop  music  pictures  ...

Create Private bin directory

To have your own private bin directory, you only need to add it to the path. Do this by editing ~/.profile (a hidden file) to include the below lines. If the lines are commented, you only have to uncomment them; if they are already there, you're all set!

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ]; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Create ~/bin directory

Now you need to create your ~/bin directory and, because .profile is run on login and only adds ~/bin if it exists at that time, you need to login again to see the updated PATH.

$ ln -s $(which ls) ~/bin/my-ls   # symlink
$ which my-ls
/home/user/bin/my-ls
$ my-ls -l ~/bin/my-ls
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 7 2010-10-27 18:56 my-ls -> /bin/ls
$ my-ls          # lookup through $PATH
bin  desktop  documents  downloads  examples.desktop  music  pictures  ...
$ ~/bin/my-ls    # doesn't use $PATH to lookup
bin  desktop  documents  downloads  examples.desktop  music  pictures  ...

One thing to watch out for when using which is that it will only find commands that are binaries in the filesystem, it does not report shell builtin, aliases, or functions. Often, it's more useful to use type to see how an actual command will be resolved by the shell; e.g.: which echo and type echo will report different things, which returns '/bin/echo' but 'type' returns that it's a shell builtin, which the shell will prefer over the file in '/bin'.

"Which" is better replaced by type or command in interactive shells, and it's completely useless in scripts.

Source: StackExchange 

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