How Burst Speeds Work
This diagram illustrates how the subscribed speed and burst speed operate with a LAT internet connection. The water faucet represents the subscribed speed in bits per second. The water in the bucket represents the amount of data in Bytes that can be transferred to your computer at the highest rate possible until the bucket is empty.
Let’s say you subscribe to our 256k service plan. You navigate to a website to download a 20Mbyte file, When you click “download,” the connection (filled bucket) downloads (dumps) as fast as possible (at 3Mbps or more) until it transfers 5Mbytes of data. At this point the bucket is empty so the remainder of the file continues to download at the subscribed rate of 256kbps. The bucket will remain empty until a period of inactivity, during which the bucket will fill back up at the subscribed rate. All speed plans are set to replenish the burst bucket in 2.6 minutes of inactivity.
Internet connection speed is measured in bits per second (bps).
Data transfer is measured in Bytes per second (Bps).
8 bits = 1 Byte