SPEED, SPEED, SPEED!

When it comes to the internet, everyone believes that Megabits per second is speed.  However, that is not true.  You’ve been lied to.  The truth is:

Latency is usually more important than Bandwidth

There.  I said it.  

The typical average home hardly ever uses more than 20 MBPS. [1]
Internet provider engineers know this.    When it comes to the internet, everyone believes that MegaBits Per Second (MBPS) is speed.  MBPS is not a reflection of SPEED, but something called BANDWIDTH.

BANDWIDTH is how much data you move from point A to B.  Think of it like a city bus.  If it’s a small bus, you can haul a few people.  If it’s a large bus, you can move a lot of people.  More bandwidth means you can move more data at a certain flow, but it technically does not say how fast that data will get to you.  It just says that once it starts flowing, it may come in at a certain rate (MBPS).

LATENCY is the time it takes to move data from point A to B.  It’s a very different thing.  It’s like comparing a truck to a sports car.  If you have a sports car, you can go from point A to B very fast.  If you are driving a truck, it will take longer.  Latency has everything to do with “speed”, because it explains how fast the data will get to you.  Data sources that are physically ‘closer’ to your location will be quicker than data sources that are located overseas, for example.

At Skymesh, we strive to provide internet connections to our valued customers with as low latency as possible.  We do this by routing your internet traffic to several of the most “local” data centers, where most internet content providers have caches, which increases retrieval time. This is something that the larger internet providers do not do, mainly because their networks are bigger and they tend to route traffic in a way that best suits them, not you.  

As of this time, approximately 45-55% of all of our internet traffic comes from “local” content delivery network (CDN) providers from those “local” sources, giving us extremely low latency.  Our dedicated fiber connectivity is designed to provide the shortest path possible to those sources, giving us the competitive advantage over our competition. 

One question we get asked a lot is:  

How much bandwidth do I really need?  

As a rule of thumb, you need about 20MBPS for every 5 devices. [2]
For example, if you have 10 data hungry devices, (ie: TVs, Ipads, PCs, etc,), then you would want 40-50MBPS.  You don’t need more than that, because you usually will not ever use it, (except when you perform a Speedtest.)

Obviously, there can be exceptions to the rule, depending on use cases.  For example, sometimes, a user needs lots and lots of bandwidth because they work from home and have a need to move large amounts of data back and forth to their company.  In that case, bandwidth may be more important than latency.  Many times, users need to take a balanced approach, because they use the internet in many different ways.  

Being transparent about how we manage and run our network is important to Skymesh.  As a “local” internet service provider, we are not the same as some out-of-town company.  As your neighbor, we are committed to do our best in helping you navigate the connected internet world, to provide the best experience possible with our service.  

While most of our competition is marketing more and more bandwidth, we at Skymesh know there’s a better way.  It is hard to ignore the truth.  Low latency means a better experience with our service regardless of the bandwidth you have.

Please continue to connect with us about your experience with our company.  We want to hear about it.  Email [email protected] or call 937-339-0389.

Thank you,

Trent Boone
CEO/President/Founder

Published: 01/10/2025