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Digital Communication Bandwidth

Xah Lee, 2006-12, …, 2011-06

Since 1990, hard disk storage capacity doubles in about every 1 year, computing speed doubles by about every 2 years. What about internet speed?

Here's my internet connection speed history:

kbit/s = 10^3 bits per second. (not the binary 1024.)

The figures above are not meant to be accurate. They are roughly the data rate as shown in web browser at time of testing. The are meant to give a rough practical figure.

As of 2009, Using Camcast Cable, my network speed from speedtest.net are:

Digital Audio Speeds

Quotes from Wikipedia:

MP3

• 32 kbit/s — MW (AM) quality
• 96 kbit/s — FM quality - This is questionable since FM broadcast is transmitted in analog 30Hz-15khz. Similarly one cannot compare directly an LP record to CD using kbit/s.
• 128--160 kbit/s — Standard Bitrate quality; difference can sometimes be obvious (e.g. lack of low frequency quality and high frequency "swashy" effects)[citation needed]
• 224–320 kbit/s — VBR to highest MP3 quality. 320 kbit/s comparable, virtually indistinguishable to CD quality.

Other audio

• 800 bit/s — minimum necessary for recognizable speech (using special-purpose FS-1015 speech codecs)
• 2.15 kbit/s — minimum bitrate available through the open-source Speex codec
• 8 kbit/s — telephone quality (using speech codecs)
• 32-500 kbit/s - lossy audio as used in Ogg Vorbis
• 256 kbit/s — Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) MP2 bit rate required to achieve a high quality signal [4]
• 400 kbit/s--1,411kbit/s — lossless audio as used in formats such as Free Lossless Audio Codec, WavPack or Monkey's Audio to compress CD audio
• 1,411.2 kbit/s — Linear PCM sound format of Compact Disc Digital Audio
• 5,644.8 kbit/s — DSD (A trademarked implementation of PDM) sound format of Super Audio CD[5]

Digital Video Speeds

• 16 kbit/s — videophone quality (minimum necessary for a consumer-acceptable "talking head" picture using various video compression schemes)
• 128 -- 384 kbit/s — business-oriented videoconferencing quality using video compression
• 1.15 Mbit/s max — VCD quality (using MPEG1 compression)[6]
• 3.5 Mbit/s typ — Standard-definition television quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-2 compression)
• 9.8 Mbit/s max — DVD (using MPEG2 compression)[7]
• 8 to 15 Mbit/s typ — HDTV quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-4 AVC compression)
• 19 Mbit/s approximate - HDV 720p (using MPEG2 compression)[8]
• 24 Mbit/s max - AVCHD (using MPEG4 AVC compression)[9]
• 25 Mbit/s approximate - HDV 1080i (using MPEG2 compression)[10]
• 29.4 Mbit/s max — HD DVD
• 40 Mbit/s max — Blu-ray Disc (using MPEG2, AVC or VC-1 compression)[11]

Device/Protocol Speeds

Devices i had personal experienced since i started to use computer in 1991:

Reference:

• Bit rate
• List of device bandwidths
• Moore's law