Internet Speed - just how fast do you need?
Discussion
I've been on 200mbps since starting working from home in 2020 and the deal was coming up for renewal and it shot up in price.
So I went for the 50mbps option, thinking I would notice something being a problem - me and the Mrs both WFH so always on zoom etc, the 2 kids are constantly online gaming on their PS5's along with all 4 having iphones connected to the wifi, plus Sky Q with Netflix, personal laptops, CCTV, Ring doorbell, etc etc.
Been on 50mbps a week now (not told anyone I've knocked it down) and I've been waiting for the cries of "THE INTERNET ISN'T WORKING!!" But to my surprise, nothing. I've even asked tonight if anyone has noticed anything wrong and they've all said "No, its the same as always".
So..........does anyone actually need fast internet? I would say we're a fairly high use family........how low could I have gone? 20mbps was the next lowest.........I daren't go that low......but could I have???
So I went for the 50mbps option, thinking I would notice something being a problem - me and the Mrs both WFH so always on zoom etc, the 2 kids are constantly online gaming on their PS5's along with all 4 having iphones connected to the wifi, plus Sky Q with Netflix, personal laptops, CCTV, Ring doorbell, etc etc.
Been on 50mbps a week now (not told anyone I've knocked it down) and I've been waiting for the cries of "THE INTERNET ISN'T WORKING!!" But to my surprise, nothing. I've even asked tonight if anyone has noticed anything wrong and they've all said "No, its the same as always".
So..........does anyone actually need fast internet? I would say we're a fairly high use family........how low could I have gone? 20mbps was the next lowest.........I daren't go that low......but could I have???
Edited by audi321 on Thursday 21st April 21:28
My colleague has just gone to 900MB from 100MB. He games a lot and a new game he wanted to play the weekend was 112GB download through steam. He had to throttle it as to not starve his kids of bandwidth for their gaming. Took just over 5 hours to download.
So I suppose in his case yes he needs it.
So I suppose in his case yes he needs it.
It all depends what you're doing. 20Mbps will likely be too slow to support 4K streaming but you might not notice when streaming regular 1080p HD video. Remember that Zoom and the like use very little of a 50Mbps downstream. Also remember that when you drop your connection speed, you're talking about your download speed. Your upload speed will also be reduced proportionally, and this might then become too slow to support all of your family's needs at any one time. If you are backing up data to the cloud, that will easily max out your connection, and then if you also want to send large files for work, you'll really start to feel it then. I don't know what you do for work, but if sending and receiving large files is part of it, or you need to access remote desktop services, then you really don't want to be constrained by an insufficient upload speed.
I live alone and have a measured 100Mbps down and 20Mbps upstream speed. I work in tech and often ned to transfer files as well as emails, and I'd say it's my upstream which is the limiting factor. Make sure you take that into account.
I live alone and have a measured 100Mbps down and 20Mbps upstream speed. I work in tech and often ned to transfer files as well as emails, and I'd say it's my upstream which is the limiting factor. Make sure you take that into account.
Big Rig said:
My colleague has just gone to 900MB from 100MB. He games a lot and a new game he wanted to play the weekend was 112GB download through steam. He had to throttle it as to not starve his kids of bandwidth for their gaming. Took just over 5 hours to download.
So I suppose in his case yes he needs it.
The problem with big rates is that few servers can serve up at these kind of rates to a single user - point above - if he was using full 100Mbs it should take a little over 2 hours for that file - chances are he would have still taken many hours with his 900Mbps connection.So I suppose in his case yes he needs it.
Gaming takes up tiny bandwidth - it is all about latency, you could easily game on a 1Mbps connection if you have very low latency. There are few legitimate home use cases for much over 50Mb as the servers at the other end simply don't provide that kind of output.
Order66 said:
The problem with big rates is that few servers can serve up at these kind of rates to a single user - point above - if he was using full 100Mbs it should take a little over 2 hours for that file - chances are he would have still taken many hours with his 900Mbps connection.
Gaming takes up tiny bandwidth - it is all about latency, you could easily game on a 1Mbps connection if you have very low latency. There are few legitimate home use cases for much over 50Mb as the servers at the other end simply don't provide that kind of output.
Apple MacOS updates are one. They are often large, 1GB plus, come out every month and Apple servers max out my 500mbps connection. Gaming takes up tiny bandwidth - it is all about latency, you could easily game on a 1Mbps connection if you have very low latency. There are few legitimate home use cases for much over 50Mb as the servers at the other end simply don't provide that kind of output.
Also some online backup services can get close to saturating a 100mbps upload speed according to the below review.
https://www.cloudwards.net/fastest-online-backup/
So if you use a Macbook and one of the faster backup services, yes you will benefit from a faster than 50mbps connection, for both upload and download.
I also thought you could use a download manager to get concurrent streams if throttling was an issue?
Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 21st April 22:52
You can never have too much bandwidth, but most people over-estimate how much they actually use.
Look at the take up of GFast - this allowed 300Mbps over FTTC but only worked on lines up to about 300M from the cabinet so anyone who could consume GFast would be getting 80/20 or thereabouts using VDSL. Openreach shelved the rollout because the take up was minuscule. The customers who could get it didn’t feel they needed it.
I reckon 98% of households would see little or no benefit of a connection beyond 100Mbps today.
We’ve got a 10Gbps uncontended Internet connection at work with loads of transit and peering (we’re a specialist ISP). Other than our own stuff on our network it’s vanishingly rare you see anything above 1Gbps from an external source.
Look at the take up of GFast - this allowed 300Mbps over FTTC but only worked on lines up to about 300M from the cabinet so anyone who could consume GFast would be getting 80/20 or thereabouts using VDSL. Openreach shelved the rollout because the take up was minuscule. The customers who could get it didn’t feel they needed it.
I reckon 98% of households would see little or no benefit of a connection beyond 100Mbps today.
We’ve got a 10Gbps uncontended Internet connection at work with loads of transit and peering (we’re a specialist ISP). Other than our own stuff on our network it’s vanishingly rare you see anything above 1Gbps from an external source.
It's not all about the download speed. typically cable routers (Virgin etc) have a good download but the upload is pants. SDSL (typically BT) has a faster upload which is useful for sharing big files.
Ping is crucial to gamers and my experience is that Cable based (fibre) connections have a lower latency and less contention ratio (the amount of users that share the same "pipe") therefore provides a better service.
We have 3 lines in as I work from home. I collect video client data and send it to the storage farm so we use Cable down and SDSL up!
Ping is crucial to gamers and my experience is that Cable based (fibre) connections have a lower latency and less contention ratio (the amount of users that share the same "pipe") therefore provides a better service.
We have 3 lines in as I work from home. I collect video client data and send it to the storage farm so we use Cable down and SDSL up!
To all the people saying most households don’t need more than 100mbps or whatever, I ask you, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
I remember reading an article about 486 processors, when they first came out, questioning why would anyone need anything faster. And another saying the new SATA 3 standard is pointlessly fast because mechanical hard disks won’t have a chance of even saturating a tenth of that bandwidth. Thankfully, they stopped arguing like this in IT publications, because they now have enough hindsight to see how short sighted those kinds of sentiments are, but I can see this attitude is well and truly alive here!
At some point, with fast FTTP everywhere, something no one ever thought of before, or something that can only exist in someones imagination right now will be enabled by that bandwidth.
I say the faster the better. Bring it on!
I remember reading an article about 486 processors, when they first came out, questioning why would anyone need anything faster. And another saying the new SATA 3 standard is pointlessly fast because mechanical hard disks won’t have a chance of even saturating a tenth of that bandwidth. Thankfully, they stopped arguing like this in IT publications, because they now have enough hindsight to see how short sighted those kinds of sentiments are, but I can see this attitude is well and truly alive here!
At some point, with fast FTTP everywhere, something no one ever thought of before, or something that can only exist in someones imagination right now will be enabled by that bandwidth.
I say the faster the better. Bring it on!
Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 21st April 22:20
In recent months, we've gone from 200Mbps to 1Gig. Mainly due to renegotiating my contract with VM, that saw them increase my speed to 500Mbps but not the price. Having an O2 contract brings Volt into play and doubles the speed.
Have i noticed any difference - No
But i never told my teenage son about it, it took him less than 10 minutes from coming home from school to notice and actually speak to me!
Have i noticed any difference - No
But i never told my teenage son about it, it took him less than 10 minutes from coming home from school to notice and actually speak to me!
Living alone i find i dont need much. I get anywhere from 3-25 meg depending on the weather.
I work from home , regular teams vid calls , file transfers of 25-30meg are the norm. I also have my phone and netflix at 1080p.
It just works although on days when it gets down below 5meg i have issues with teams video so have to go voice only if i am also doing an icloud sync or downloading a big file .
Iphone ios upgrades i wait until the bandwidth is at the top end otherwise it can take over an hour.
I work from home , regular teams vid calls , file transfers of 25-30meg are the norm. I also have my phone and netflix at 1080p.
It just works although on days when it gets down below 5meg i have issues with teams video so have to go voice only if i am also doing an icloud sync or downloading a big file .
Iphone ios upgrades i wait until the bandwidth is at the top end otherwise it can take over an hour.
I guess it depends.....
When the kids were young and permanently attached to Xboxes and iPhones, the max speed the house could get was 35Mbps. It was absolutely fine - besides which, we couldn't have improved it.
I now have FTTP and can get Gigabit speeds, but I've knocked the contract back to 75Mbps and it seems fast enough for a smart TV, Laptops, mobiles on wifi, HD on YouTube etc. I did try the full speed for a while as a trial, it honestly made no difference to me as web pages still took the same time to appear. But if you're downloading a lot or connected for heavy gaming? No idea.
When the kids were young and permanently attached to Xboxes and iPhones, the max speed the house could get was 35Mbps. It was absolutely fine - besides which, we couldn't have improved it.
I now have FTTP and can get Gigabit speeds, but I've knocked the contract back to 75Mbps and it seems fast enough for a smart TV, Laptops, mobiles on wifi, HD on YouTube etc. I did try the full speed for a while as a trial, it honestly made no difference to me as web pages still took the same time to appear. But if you're downloading a lot or connected for heavy gaming? No idea.
Order66 said:
IMO, 10Mbps per user is plenty. You'd struggle to notice anything more than that unless doing something fairly specific like transferring GBs of files daily.
I have to agree - and I use a lot of internet. Was on a 10mbs connection for years and it worked fine for me. Currently on a 75/20 connection and it's great, I feel no need to take up the offers of a much faster connection that BT keep sending me. The 20mbit upload is the biggest benefit for me - means I can grab TV/movies at speed off my server when I am away from home and makes for a great web proxy experience (can use it to get UK-restricted streaming services when abroad).Super high bandwidth is really only needed if lots of people are gonna be using it simultaneously and continuously. That's when you need the capacity. Of course, if you have such a usage pattern its also worth spending on something like a mesh WiFi network and/or powerline connections for actual ethernet to PCs and servers so that you can deliver a fast internet connection to your devices. A mate had a 200mbps cable connection and was really unhappy with it because of the crappy Virgin Superhub WiFi but after I recommended a set of Whole Home Mini discs, it transformed his experience.
People's perception is funny; for location A, we have 10/10Gbps fibre and at B we have 75/15Mbps.
My wife thinks the Internet is faster there; child bases his speed measurement on pings (probably like the one above) and has about 4ms here and more there). I actually think it's something to do with her 2019 MBP Wifi card.......
Price for each is stupid; A (10/10) is €35 including a phone line and Apple TV service; B is €30 for Internet and a phone that we never use.
Neither gets saturated, especially not the 10/10
My wife thinks the Internet is faster there; child bases his speed measurement on pings (probably like the one above) and has about 4ms here and more there). I actually think it's something to do with her 2019 MBP Wifi card.......
Price for each is stupid; A (10/10) is €35 including a phone line and Apple TV service; B is €30 for Internet and a phone that we never use.
Neither gets saturated, especially not the 10/10
king need or want it, not at 30 quid which seems to be the cheapest!I won't go into the boring details, but when we first moved into our new house, BT cocked up the FTTC connection massively, meaning we were stuck on copper for over 4 months.
I went ballistic with them as I was convinced we would be severely impacted, due to me and my wife working from home, working on virtual desktops, video calls, teams meetings, working/transferring fairly large files etc. Not to mention all our entertainment was via Netflix. Prime, catch-up etc.
Did a speed test on the copper and found it to be running at 19.5Mb down and 1.1Mb up.
It turned out that it was absolutely fine. Never had a single issue. Both of us working at the same time, internet radio playing, Ring doorbell, CCTV, etc. Both of could be watching HD Netflix or whatever without any problems.
Makes me wonder why we now have 80Mb fibre!
I went ballistic with them as I was convinced we would be severely impacted, due to me and my wife working from home, working on virtual desktops, video calls, teams meetings, working/transferring fairly large files etc. Not to mention all our entertainment was via Netflix. Prime, catch-up etc.
Did a speed test on the copper and found it to be running at 19.5Mb down and 1.1Mb up.
It turned out that it was absolutely fine. Never had a single issue. Both of us working at the same time, internet radio playing, Ring doorbell, CCTV, etc. Both of could be watching HD Netflix or whatever without any problems.
Makes me wonder why we now have 80Mb fibre!
Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 22 April 16:07
My neighbour manages to stream I player and he has 8 meg adsl. BT want to change him to fttc but he say there is no point. Admittedly they don't use it a lot as they don't really understand that modern trickery. If only he knew you could read newspapers online rather than driving 6 miles to the shop and back for one.
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