Connection Speed

In the early days of the Internet a T1 connection was considered a fast connection. Today connection speeds are much faster. 1 byte equals to 8 bits (and that's the number of bits used to transport one character). Low-speed modems can transport from about 14 000 to 56 000 bits per second (14 to 56 kilobits per second). That is somewhere between 2000 and 7000 characters per second, or about 1 to 5 pages of written text.
One kilobit (Kb) is 1024 bits. One megabit (Mb) is 1024 kilobits. One gigabit (Gb) is 1024 megabits.
These are connection speeds used on the Internet today:

Name	Connection	Speed per second
Modem	Analog	14.4-56Kb
D0	Digital (ISDN)	64Kb
T1	Digital	1.55Mb
T3	Digital	43Mb
OC-1	Optical Carrier	52Mb
OC-3	Optical Carrier	156Mb
OC-12	Optical Carrier	622Mb
OC-24	Optical Carrier	1.244Gb
OC-48	Optical Carrier	2.488Gb

Before you sign up with a host provider, surf some other web sites on their servers, and try to get a good feeling about their network speed. Also compare the other sites against yours, to see if it looks like you have the same needs. Contacting some of the other customers is also a valuable