591 – Fast speeds are a requirement now: Tom talks Understanding Internet Speeds

Episode 591 – Internet Speeds
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 591 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about understanding Internet speeds. This episode is going to tell you everything you need to know when it comes to your home or office. Internet connection. Now you ignore what I say today. You basically get screwed over and waste time and look bad forever. All right. Now, let me just comment briefly on looking bad. I have a mental note of everyone that's been on my podcast that had a lousy Internet connection, which causes me or both of us delays in getting the darn podcast done. And it creates a lot of hassle for me with extra editing time and some things I can't even fix and have to be stuck with them. And I don't want that on a high quality podcast like this. So do you think that I'll have those people back? Probably not. So don't let yourself look bad in front of prospects and clients and in the media by ignoring your Internet connection. That's what we're going to talk about today. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 590. That was small sales. I'm going to go over the value of small sales as opposed to always going for the big stuff. And while we're on Internet stuff, episode 589 was about VPNs, virtual private networks to they help you with your privacy with business tools that that allows you to pretend to be somewhere else so you can see the advertising and search results in different areas and also pleasurable things.

[00:02:11] So you can get past Internet blocks in different countries and see stuff that you want. So that was episode 589. Of course, anytime you want to get to a back episode, you put screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. VPNs was 589, small sales was 590 and today is 591. And I know you're going to want to pay attention to this one because everybody's affected by this one. All right. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. It saved me millions of keystrokes and allows me to spend time with customers and prospects. And that's where the money is. Not fighting with your computer. So pick up your copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. And also, don't forget, we're in this beautiful thing we're doing for persons with disabilities. We just put an update video by one of the people in it that's legally blind and check out our our Go Fund Me campaign by going to my school website at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Click on the GoFundMe campaign. You can see his video and if that doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will. And then anything that can kick in helps facilitate the program for these persons with disabilities and something you can really be proud of.

[00:03:43] All right, let's get into Internet speeds. I've noticed for a long time when I'm helping my mentees with some project that most of them, hey, they just don't have a good handle on what's going on with their Internet connection. I'm sitting there on Zoom with them and they're cutting out or they they want to send me something to look at or they freeze up and it takes forever for them to upload something. Just, you know, this is just a constant thing when you have so many people that you're helping, you kind of notice if things are just slowing you down for no reason. So that's why I decided to make this episode. And when they're trying to either be a host or be interviewed on my podcast, these aren't necessarily my mentees, but all the people I have on my podcast when I interview them. They might have a bunch of internet noise surrounding their voice, which has nothing to do with their microphone or any noise in their office or home recording environment. Now, I don't pretend to exactly understand this internet noise, but after doing nearly 600 of these podcasts, I can tell you I get that noise from every guest that has a poor internet connection. And also. The same results from mentees on Zoom calls that have a poor Internet connection.

[00:05:13] It doesn't have to be this way. Well and well, sometimes it does. I mean, but it mostly doesn't have to be this way. If you get some knowledge and you're willing to both complain when necessary to your Internet provider and adjust your Internet usage when it makes sense depending on your situation. I'll explain all of that today. Okay. Let's first talk about wi fi and hardwiring. Wi fi means you're not hard wired or there's no wire between you and your Internet source. Hardwiring, obviously, is the opposite. If you want the best possible speed hardwiring with an ethernet cable it's called from your router will always be best. Of course, if you're in a hotel or some other shared environment, this may not be possible. And don't tell me you work at home on a tablet or cell phone. You know how they always say there's an app for that? Well, there's an adapter for that for iPhone users. It's called a lightning to Ethernet adapter for Androids. And I think the iPad Pro also will use this. It's a usb-c to Ethernet adapter. Older androids, I'm pretty sure use the micro USB to ethernet adept. Anyway, there are adapters to hardwire your device. Now let's talk about the types of Internet connections you may have. I'm not even going to talk about dial up. All right. Even though it does still exist, believe it or not.

[00:06:55] Let's start with cable, which is very common. Here's the pros and cons of cable. The pro is that it's readily accessible. It's all over the place and it can be lightning fast. I'm not talking about a lightning port on your iPhone. I'm talking about lightning fast. The con is that it can slow up worse than dial up when lots of people are on it. I had a mentee the other day book a Zoom consultation at 6 p.m. Eastern time, and her connection was so bad we had to switch to a telephone call. I told her about the fact that cable can slow down terribly when lots of people are on, which would be the case when when lots of people get home from work after five and start using their cable. Now, if you're stuck in that situation, one thing you can do is schedule your big uploads and downloads and streaming at different times during the day when less people are on. That's one workaround. Another possible service you may have is DSL. Dstl has the advantage of constant speed, no matter how many people are on it. But the download of this is that the speed that you can get has to do with how far physically your home or office is from the switching station of the provider. Another possibility is fiber optics. These cables are considered the most reliable and can give you a super, super fast, constant speed, both uploading and downloading, which I'm going to talk about in a minute.

[00:08:45] But even then the scumbag providers will sell you a speed and then still provide you with a slower speed. Because most people, especially if you don't listen to this podcast, have no idea that they're getting screwed so the companies can get away with it. I don't want you to be the one of those people that gets screwed over. And yeah, I want you to screw the commute, but not get screwed over. Okay. All right. Now, before I talk about uploading download speeds, I should mention one other type of Internet provider which currently you see a lot of in the more rural areas, and that's satellite. About the only advantage I can see of this type of service is that you can get it about anywhere, no matter how far from civilization you live. The downside is it's slow, it's expensive, and I'm pretty sure it's affected by weather. At least that's what I hear from users. I never used it myself. Plus you have to have a receiver transmitter, dish antenna with access to the sky. Okay. Let's talk about uploading download speeds and most of the services I just mentioned. Download speeds are faster than upload speeds, but not always. Download means how long it takes for data to come from the internet down to your location or device, like your computer or your cell phone, tablets, smart TV, all that stuff.

[00:10:27] Upload speeds are how long things take to be delivered from your device up to the Internet. For instance, if you're sending a big file to someone, you have to upload it to the internet for the other person to retrieve it and download. Now the unit of measure for upload and download speeds traditionally has been m b p s which stands for megabits per second. Now that faster speeds are available, you might hear gigabits per second. Now, you don't have to know too much about this. And chances are your home is going to your office is going to be well, maybe if you're in a high end office, it'll be faster. But if you're at home, it's probably going to be megabits per second in that arena somewhere. Now, one simple thing you can remember is that there are a thousand megabits per second in one gigabit per second. Now. Here's why I'm unhappy. All right. Not in general as a person, but with regard to my Internet speed. I pay for a gigabit connection super fast. But I just did a speed test a few minutes ago on a Sunday morning, and I'm only getting 320 megabits per second, which is only one third of what I'm paying for. In other words, I'm losing 680 megabits per second. Now the scumbag companies are still blaming the pandemic on why they can't get the full speed. See, the pandemic has given lots of companies an excuse for poor service, which means increased profit for them.

[00:12:20] You know, they give you a lousy and slow down everything and have crappy equipment and then still charge you full price. I mean, they didn't decrease my bill by two thirds. All right. So how do you test your Internet speed? Well, this is pretty easy. All you have to do is Google Internet speed test, and loads of places will run an instant test for you for free. You just click a button and sit there. I happen to use I think it's called Ookla. But it really doesn't matter too much. Your test will give you a download speed and upload speed and a latency report, which I'll cover in a second. But before I do, let me give you a couple of tips on running these tests. And the test only takes a minute or so, depending on your Internet speed. It's faster the faster speed is. First I suggest you make a log of your results and make sure you put the day of the week and the time of day next to each result. You see, I want you to test over a period of time so you can learn the best times of day to do things and also to have a record of results. If you find it necessary to complain to your service provider, it's hard for them to dispute this log that you've kept for a week or two at different times a day, very meticulously.

[00:13:54] And they say, Well, we're giving you the speed. Oh, yeah, well, it's not coming here, buddy. All right. So the next step is to make sure you're not doing automatic downloads or your kids and spouse aren't streaming ten movies and gaming and all while you're doing the test. Make sure nothing much is going on when you do your test. Another tip is to do the test in different parts of your home or office and put the location in your log. This mostly applies if you aren't hardwiring to your router, but if you can do it even for a week or so, you might identify wires that are old or broken in certain parts of your house. Maybe your Ethernet cables are the older style and can't handle the speeds of a new router and service. In that case, it's not the fault of the service provider. It's up to you to use the latest cables that are in good shape. I mostly use Cat five E at the time of this recording, but I believe Cat six is also available. Many of you might be stuck on the old Cat five cable, not Cat five E, which is a later newer version that can handle higher speeds. You can look on the cable and you'll see a little tiny printing of the what it is Cat five, Cat five, Cat six or whatever.

[00:15:27] Now, when you run the report. One of your results will be called latency. Latency refers to the time it takes for a signal to be sent from your computer to your service provider and come back. High latency can lead to what they call buffering. Like when you're streaming a video, it's like you see the little circle. It's kind of waiting, waiting, waiting. But a lot of times it's more disruptive on video chats like Zoom and stuff and online gaming. All right. So how do you improve your whatever connection you got and what are the benefits of improving? Well, let's look at the benefits first. I mentioned at the opening of this episode, you will simply look bad in front of prospects, customers and in the media. If you don't have a good Internet connection. So pay attention and do something about your speeds and you will look way better in front of all those people. And you won't miss media opportunities like podcasts and TV because of a poor connection. You want people focusing on you and your message, not how pitiful your connection is. All right. You're also save tons of time downloading and uploading stuff. Literally, things can happen ten times faster if you pay attention to this topic. And. And also, many of you are familiar with the concept of buffering. I just mentioned it, that that's when something you're watching just spins and spins because your Internet connection is too bad to stream it properly.

[00:17:12] Now let's talk about what to do about it. Well, first, if you can go with fiber optics, go ahead and do it. It's usually buried in the ground, so it's not really susceptible to high winds and rain or trees falling down on lines and stuff. And the speed can be lightning fast. Both upload and download. Now, if you're on cable and stuck with it, maybe fiber optics or maybe fiber optics isn't available in your area. Pay attention to the time of day and do your speed test log for at least a week and preferably two weeks. And avoid special event times like when the Olympics are on where the entire internet is stressed. Then pay attention to your internal hardware. Do you have the latest router? Has it been sitting there for five years or more with no attention? Well, you probably should go down to Best Buy or order one online of the latest greatest. Do you have well maintained cables that are modern, which can handle the faster speeds? If you normally work from one place in your home or office, plug in a hard wire directly from your router. Now, if you have multiple locations where you work, you can have Ethernet outlets installed by electricians or Internet or some Internet specialists. So you can plug in all over the house. You can get adapters for your cell phone and tablet. Well, let's say you move around a lot while using wi fi.

[00:18:53] In other words, you're not wired well. Do your speed test and note the different locations where you consistently get the fastest speeds. Maybe you put a chair or a desk in those locations. So just pay attention to your Internet speeds and you'll look good to everybody you're dealing with and you'll save tons of time in the long run. Now, if you like to help with this and all the other kinds of things we help people with for now 23, 24, 25 years, I lost track. Who's been helping people so long on the Internet that joined my mentor program. I always guarantee I'll save you more money than you'll ever spend with me. And the upside is you'll have the best chance and have a whole team of people that is tied to you to help you be successful online. You know, we don't get our big money here unless you're largely successful. So that's how my program is so much different than everybody else who wants all the money up front and they could care less if you're successful. That's not the way we roll. Check out the details at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. Give me a call. We can discuss your future online. And before you call me, make sure your Internet's fast in case we do a zoom call. Okay. All right. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.