I recently upgraded from 30Mb to 75Mb. I don't really notice a big difference. Very little I did before needed a full 30 Mb connection. Is Netflix higher quality now? I can't tell.
I doubt I'd upgrade again anytime soon. I've reached a point where my internet speed's bits per second has exceeded my ability to consume data.
It's a chicken/egg problem. No one is going to develop mass-market services that require users to have a gbit internet hookup if there are hardly any potential customers. Which leads people to think they don't need gbit internet because there is nothing that requires that kind of speed.
Just like there was no need for most people to have >10Mbit internet without the likes of Netflix or Youtube existing, and no way for those sites to survive if everyone is using a 56k modem.
Netflix probably didn't change. Even if you pay extra for their Ultra HD mode that will fit down 30Mbps without trouble. If you have kids this upgrade should mean now your family can watch 3-4 videos at once even in Ultra HD.
I concur with the sibling comments. I had 30Mbps and it was "good enough", but I know have gigabit at home and its reached the point where its actually quicker for me to work from home when dealing with large production database dumps and trial-and-error Docker pull and build than it is to work at the office.
Its simply a case of when you have it, you find ways to use it, but boy is it one of the small pleasures in life to do a dist-upgrade in about 15 minutes.
We have 60Mb and most of the time that's just plenty. I would like a little faster speeds when I download a new Linux image or something, but even then, it only takes a few minutes.
Trust me, once you get a 1Gbps network connection, you will love it. It's not that Netflix would be faster, but watching wget or curl reach massive speeds is just awesome :-)
I’m still on 15 Mbps at my home, for $30/month. I haven’t found the need to upgrade even though according to the FCC, I don’t even have “broadband” (defined as 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up). I don’t often hear people complain that their internet is too slow, only that it’s too expensive. I hope that more bandwidth translates to cheaper internet, but it seems like the past 10 years my ISP has had the business model of raise the price and the speed at the same time and remove slower tiers of service, basically forcing people to pay for speeds that they never use.
Interesting. I didn't realize that I don't have "broadband". I haven't had any problems streaming video or anything because our internet is super consistent at 20 down, 10 up. I'm on a fiber network with 100-BaseT for the last mile, so unfortunately I'm unlikely to get a big speed upgrade, and the top tier is just 10 mbit faster.
I've considered switching to another ISP, but the service is so reliable and I only occasionally want faster download speeds. I also like that I don't have to deal with cyclic deals like cable and DSL providers do, I just pay a flat $40/month.
Verizon sold most of its landline business to Frontier over the past decade. While the few remaining Verizon FiOS customers got upgraded to gigabit, the Frontier FiOS customers were left with the old technology. Our Frontier contract just expired and we’re upgrading from 150 mbps to 500 mbps for about $5 more tomorrow. But I’m not optimistic about the speed. I tried paying $150/mo for the Frontier 500 mbps package two years ago and downloads never came close to that speed, the only thing that did were speed tests. Hopefully they’ve optimized more.
The saddest part is that the sales rep insisted that we’d need a modem, I’m sure because the majority of their service areas have been left on DSL.
Don't most servers throttle how much bandwidth outbound traffic gets? I never expect to get full speed downloading a random file. Even a super popular torrent might not have enough peers to reach full potential before it's done downloading.
If Speedtests come close, what are you downloading? You could be limited by the servers. Try a few torrents maybe? But then the modem they provide might not be able to handle that many connections. I can only get full speed with my own router running Openwrt.
I live very far from any major town(10 miles from post office, 15 miles from a high school, 20 miles from a major retail outlet). Our current internet is $35 for a 5Mb connection and the best I can currently get is $70 for a 10Mb connection. But sometime next year I will have fiber available to me. IIRC, it'll be something like $60 for a 250Mb connection and $110 for a 1Gb.
It'll be interesting to see how fiber transforms rural areas compared to areas that don't get it.
There is a weird dynamic in the US where many rural areas have garbage level internet access ... and some pockets have insanely high levels of service.
Somehow some random telcos have found a way (presumably government subsidies (I don't think that is bad)) to provide some amazing service, while others wallow in absolute trashy telco service.
I know folks with consistently low latency 1Gb service that is just amazing, and folks where the local telco literally left lines lying across their lawn providing terrible service claiming they'd get back to it and never did.
I worked with one rural telco provider who had datacenter grade switches running 1G sfps (they could have run 10G sfps on all of the ports if they chose to do so) ... one port per household. I talked to the guy running the show there for a while and he said they just had this massive budget so "why not?". He noted almost none of the houses used their service to its fullest extent with the exception of some local teens ;)
I'm in Japan, paying 980 yen ($11) a month for a gigabit connection for the first year. After that it's 4000 yen (~$45) a month. Progress is good here :)
In Ireland, oddly, (typically 1Gbit, with artificial caps for cheaper plans) FTTP is becoming quite common in rural areas, but is almost non-existent in cities, where (100Mbit or worse) FTTC is dominant.
UK Has good coverage except in rural areas, and in some rural areas they've done their own FTTP (B4RN for example).
There's a big "full fibre" push from various different providers (Hyperoptic (FTTB), GigaClear, CityFibre, BT OpenReach).
Most densely populated areas have the choice of FTTC (the infrastructure is ALL BT OpenReach, however you have a choice of providers who piggy back on this), and in bigger cities/towns Virgin Cable up to 380Mbps down 37Mbps up.
Pricing is very competitive, because even with areas that are all BT FTTC lots of providers use their infrastructure and OfCom regulates how much OpenReach are allowed to charge.
I have a truly unlimited cable package for £50 a month, 384 down 37 up.
> Signals from space have to travel a long way, so the connection is slower than earth-bound internet options. But in unserved places, it's better than nothing.
Is this true for LEO projects such as Starlink and OneWeb? I thought the latency characteristics were much more reasonable there. Or is this speaking about bandwidth? The wording is a bit vague.
I think the author is remembering 15 years ago when the first satellite internet companies existed. I remember trying to play Warcraft 3 at a friend's house in the country and having 2-3 second pings.
Those companies were using Geosynchronous satellites so that dishes could point at a single spot in the sky. Unfortunately, geosynchronous orbit is at a height of 35,786 km. That means almost 120ms just to reach the satellite, plus another 120ms to get the signal back down to earth, then your request hitting the real internet and another 240ms to get back to you over the same two satellite hops.
SpaceX's Starlink will be <1000 km up in low earth orbit, so somewhere under 5ms away at speed of light. For any transmission across an ocean, Starlink will be much faster (so you just know high speed trading companies will be big customers). How much bandwidth it offers remains to be seen.
I think they mean latency, which is less of a problem, though still not good, for hypothetical LEO solutions. Bandwidth, however, will remain a problem.
Interesting to see discussion where people say <100 Mbps is enough. No. In Lithuania, general household internet speed is 300 Mbps. I'am with 1 Gbps and I can't imagine how other countries have average 10 Mbps per user. Wow.
It's like a car engine: it's better to have 3.0L than 1.2L, because when you need the power, you will get it.
I think it's simply a case of not missing what you don't know.
I got my first 10 Mb/s connection around 2000. At the time I found it to be as fast as I could possibly want. I mean, it's the same speed as the local network at the computer club just a few years prior.
Now I have gigabit (2 Gb/s actually, but I can't be bothered to configure network bonding), and I couldn't imagine going back to anything slower.
This seems purely driven by profit. Retrofitting cell towers has a ROI that is inverse to density of customers willing to pay (broadcast distance is limited). Whereas if fiber has already been run and good Ethernet cables already laid, increasing total bandwidth for wired connections has a cost ~proportional to paying customers.
Bah, should have had mobile in the title. I have gigabit fiber at the house and its fast enough that I have no idea what to do with that much bandwidth.
There isn't anything to do with that much bandwidth.
It's another space where there's a consumer product and consumers have been taught that the bigger number is better, so you advertise a 1000Mbps service and consumers think it's worth more than your competitor's 500Mbps when in reality although those numbers are "true" they're irrelevant.
Eventually consumers get jaded and learn to ignore the number, the way you'll see nobody cares when you tell them your "hi res" audio is 96kHz at 24 bits - CD audio with 44.1kHz at 16 bits was more than enough, more isn't better for ordinary users so they eventually learned to ignore it‡.
I had Gbps Internet access in 1998, and in 2015 I was buying new service for my new home. Should I buy the cheap 40Mbps package? A bit extra for 80Mbps? Or spend a lot more for 1Gbps? And I knew, which most consumers don't, that it didn't matter, 40Mbps is fine, once in a while 80Mbps would be slightly better (maybe a new video game downloads in 10 minutes rather than 20 minutes) and 1Gbps would just make some numbers bigger that I'd show off once in a while but make no actual concrete difference. So I bought the 40Mbps service, no regrets.
The main practical things 1Gbps will do for you is avoid buffer bloat since there's less need for a buffer, but you could also do that by just buying hardware that doesn't have buffer bloat.
‡ If you are a recording studio you might actually want 24-bit, and maybe at a pinch even 96kHz, but ordinary consumers needn't care. Likewise somewhere like a school definitely wants 1Gbps networking, but my mother needn't care.
[+] [-] mabbo|6 years ago|reply
I recently upgraded from 30Mb to 75Mb. I don't really notice a big difference. Very little I did before needed a full 30 Mb connection. Is Netflix higher quality now? I can't tell.
I doubt I'd upgrade again anytime soon. I've reached a point where my internet speed's bits per second has exceeded my ability to consume data.
[+] [-] Aaargh20318|6 years ago|reply
Just like there was no need for most people to have >10Mbit internet without the likes of Netflix or Youtube existing, and no way for those sites to survive if everyone is using a 56k modem.
[+] [-] tialaramex|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] katet|6 years ago|reply
Its simply a case of when you have it, you find ways to use it, but boy is it one of the small pleasures in life to do a dist-upgrade in about 15 minutes.
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trilila|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebigspacefuck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beatgammit|6 years ago|reply
I've considered switching to another ISP, but the service is so reliable and I only occasionally want faster download speeds. I also like that I don't have to deal with cyclic deals like cable and DSL providers do, I just pay a flat $40/month.
[+] [-] alexkiritz|6 years ago|reply
The saddest part is that the sales rep insisted that we’d need a modem, I’m sure because the majority of their service areas have been left on DSL.
[+] [-] kgwxd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manigandham|6 years ago|reply
Try a few 4K YouTube videos and see what happens.
[+] [-] lonelappde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jotm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugh4life|6 years ago|reply
It'll be interesting to see how fiber transforms rural areas compared to areas that don't get it.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
Somehow some random telcos have found a way (presumably government subsidies (I don't think that is bad)) to provide some amazing service, while others wallow in absolute trashy telco service.
I know folks with consistently low latency 1Gb service that is just amazing, and folks where the local telco literally left lines lying across their lawn providing terrible service claiming they'd get back to it and never did.
I worked with one rural telco provider who had datacenter grade switches running 1G sfps (they could have run 10G sfps on all of the ports if they chose to do so) ... one port per household. I talked to the guy running the show there for a while and he said they just had this massive budget so "why not?". He noted almost none of the houses used their service to its fullest extent with the exception of some local teens ;)
[+] [-] pimterry|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bschwindHN|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] distantsounds|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philjohn|6 years ago|reply
There's a big "full fibre" push from various different providers (Hyperoptic (FTTB), GigaClear, CityFibre, BT OpenReach).
Most densely populated areas have the choice of FTTC (the infrastructure is ALL BT OpenReach, however you have a choice of providers who piggy back on this), and in bigger cities/towns Virgin Cable up to 380Mbps down 37Mbps up.
Pricing is very competitive, because even with areas that are all BT FTTC lots of providers use their infrastructure and OfCom regulates how much OpenReach are allowed to charge.
I have a truly unlimited cable package for £50 a month, 384 down 37 up.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ehsankia|6 years ago|reply
Is this true for LEO projects such as Starlink and OneWeb? I thought the latency characteristics were much more reasonable there. Or is this speaking about bandwidth? The wording is a bit vague.
[+] [-] mabbo|6 years ago|reply
Those companies were using Geosynchronous satellites so that dishes could point at a single spot in the sky. Unfortunately, geosynchronous orbit is at a height of 35,786 km. That means almost 120ms just to reach the satellite, plus another 120ms to get the signal back down to earth, then your request hitting the real internet and another 240ms to get back to you over the same two satellite hops.
SpaceX's Starlink will be <1000 km up in low earth orbit, so somewhere under 5ms away at speed of light. For any transmission across an ocean, Starlink will be much faster (so you just know high speed trading companies will be big customers). How much bandwidth it offers remains to be seen.
[+] [-] manigandham|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gopalv|6 years ago|reply
London to NY via space should be faster than through the ocean fiber, though it won't have a steady RTT over minutes, as the satellites pass overhead.
Look at fig 7 on [1].
[1] = http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/starlink-draft.pdf
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smudgymcscmudge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tetris1|6 years ago|reply
It's like a car engine: it's better to have 3.0L than 1.2L, because when you need the power, you will get it.
[+] [-] lokedhs|6 years ago|reply
I got my first 10 Mb/s connection around 2000. At the time I found it to be as fast as I could possibly want. I mean, it's the same speed as the local network at the computer club just a few years prior.
Now I have gigabit (2 Gb/s actually, but I can't be bothered to configure network bonding), and I couldn't imagine going back to anything slower.
[+] [-] parentheses|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austincheney|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tialaramex|6 years ago|reply
It's another space where there's a consumer product and consumers have been taught that the bigger number is better, so you advertise a 1000Mbps service and consumers think it's worth more than your competitor's 500Mbps when in reality although those numbers are "true" they're irrelevant.
Eventually consumers get jaded and learn to ignore the number, the way you'll see nobody cares when you tell them your "hi res" audio is 96kHz at 24 bits - CD audio with 44.1kHz at 16 bits was more than enough, more isn't better for ordinary users so they eventually learned to ignore it‡.
I had Gbps Internet access in 1998, and in 2015 I was buying new service for my new home. Should I buy the cheap 40Mbps package? A bit extra for 80Mbps? Or spend a lot more for 1Gbps? And I knew, which most consumers don't, that it didn't matter, 40Mbps is fine, once in a while 80Mbps would be slightly better (maybe a new video game downloads in 10 minutes rather than 20 minutes) and 1Gbps would just make some numbers bigger that I'd show off once in a while but make no actual concrete difference. So I bought the 40Mbps service, no regrets.
The main practical things 1Gbps will do for you is avoid buffer bloat since there's less need for a buffer, but you could also do that by just buying hardware that doesn't have buffer bloat.
‡ If you are a recording studio you might actually want 24-bit, and maybe at a pinch even 96kHz, but ordinary consumers needn't care. Likewise somewhere like a school definitely wants 1Gbps networking, but my mother needn't care.
[+] [-] jotm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmajid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p0nce|6 years ago|reply