Every day our devices exchange thousands megabytes of data, and a lot of services we usually use require high download speed. For example, to stream Netflix in HD you need at least 5Mbps and for Zoom group call in 720p HD the necessary speed is 1.5 Mbps.

Your download / upload speeds depend on data transfer. The definition may vary from person to person, but we will consider it as a connectivity between the devices, no matter if the connection is analog or digital. GBKSOFT team works with huge loads of data on a daily basis and gladly highlights the main aspects about data transfer you should know.

Why does data transfer is important for business?

Nowadays, it’s hard to find a business that doesn’t use computer technologies at all. So if you at least upload files to any cloud service, you deal with the data transfer. The speed of the data transfer is also called data transfer rate which (DTR) is measured in bits per second (bps).

For big amounts of data it’s important to obtain a high transfer rate, especially if you use your own business networks. It will allow your network to proceed with complex tasks. Whether you use a data-intensive application, or your marketing team frequently livestreams, or your software demands constant media exchange, low DTR will worsen your user experience or performance of the whole company.

How does data transfer work?

Data can be transferred through different mediums, depending on your need, for example from desktop to flash drive, or between two devices through wire or wireless network. The most complex process is how data travels through the Internet. As people all around the world have started to access tons of websites and applications online, the need of high-quality and quick transfer increased. One server couldn’t proceed with this task, so content distribution networks, or CDN, came in the game. They usually include a set of proxy servers and data centers geographically situated in different parts of the world. CDN switches the load from the central server to its own multiple ones, and thus increases the capacity.

How do I measure data transfer rate?

Have you ever noticed that your Internet connection might not be so fast as your provider declares? The bandwidth, or the maximum data transfer rate of the network, may not be available because the server which provides data is used by a lot of other customers.

You can check your DTR online, using special tools like this one. The main parameters you need to check are download speed, upload speed, and latency, also known as ping — how much time it takes to deliver data from the network to your computer.

What affects data transfer?

Sometimes DTR doesn’t satisfy at all, and that means problems. The network usually consists of different elements, and the capacity of the weakest dictate the performance of the whole link. There are a few factors that can slow your data transfer:

• network latency — we’ve already mentioned it; it depends on the physical distance, number of hops between your device and server and performance of each device;
• network congestion — if your network transfers more data than it can handle, then it’s congested and reached its maximal capacity, thus no more devices can add to this network and the connected devices might not proceed with new sessions;
• health of the client or server — if your server doesn’t have the required hardware resources, for example the number of processors or RAM, the whole network might suffer;
• infrastructure parameters — by default the network is free of any congestion, but some devices enable special policies to protect the device or balance load; however they also decrease the speed of data transfer.

In conclusion

With our constant technical progress, the amount of data increases exponentially. We already live in the era of big data, and its transfer and proceeding is a big challenge. Therefore, it’s crucial for every enterprise to have a functioning infrastructure to handle the amount of content you need for operational work.