How much internet speed do you actually need?

[mkuilen]

For an upcoming move, I was looking into different ISPs and internet connections.

My preferred ISP offers the following (Prices in EUR, 45.22 USD, 53.19 USD, 55.85 USD):

Obviously, the SuperFiber1 package seems to be the best option since it's only 2.50 EUR more expensive than the 200Mbit option.

Lately I've seen a lot of people talk about having too much internet speeds, you've probably seen the LTT video about it. One thing no one seems to talk about is, how much do you actually need then? Do you actually need a gigabit connection, or is 200Mbit fine for most enthusiasts?
What do you thing about this? Do you have gigabit, if so would you recommend it?
I'm not really looking for advice (but it is welcome of course), I'm just really curious about your opinion on the matter.
Sorry if this is a duplicate btw, I couldn't find another discussion about this.

[AndreiArgeanu]

If the price difference is so small between them all, it only makes sense to get the best one in this particular case. But yeah, as long as it's reliable, 200mbps will be more than enough for a house hold of at least 4 people assumming they're not doing bandwidth intensive tasks too often, say the now and again game download on a console or something along the lines.

[Hellowpplz]

11 minutes ago, mkuilen said:

For an upcoming move, I was looking into different ISPs and internet connections.

My preferred ISP offers the following (Prices in EUR, 45.22 USD, 53.19 USD, 55.85 USD):

Obviously, the SuperFiber1 package seems to be the best option since it's only 2.50 EUR more expensive than the 200Mbit option.

Lately I've seen a lot of people talk about having too much internet speeds, you've probably seen the LTT video about it. One thing no one seems to talk about is, how much do you actually need then? Do you actually need a gigabit connection, or is 200Mbit fine for most enthusiasts?
What do you thing about this? Do you have gigabit, if so would you recommend it?
I'm not really looking for advice (but it is welcome of course), I'm just really curious about your opinion on the matter.
Sorry if this is a duplicate btw, I couldn't find another discussion about this.

With how much faster it is and how little price mark-up there is, SuperFiber would obviously be the best here. However, if you do not mind slower download speeds and no more than 2 people extra lives with you, 100mbps would be enough for pretty much everything else. Speaking from experience, I have a 100mbps mesh router with spectrum, downloads take a while but other than that it's fine.

[jaslion]

Like genuinly we have 70mb/s down here and 20 up. Its totally fine 99.99% of the time. The only thing that takes a bit longer is downloading games and patches.

 

Previously with 450mb/s down we funnily ran into the issue that most stuff capped at 250mb/s because the disk couldnt install the game fast enough

With prices so close I'd just get the fastest one.

 

 

 

[mariushm]

See in the fineprint if there's some kind of AUP (acceptable use policy) or Terms Of Service differences for the gigabit fiber vs the others. 

 

The 200 mbps may be unlimited best effort etc, the gigabit could be best effort for the first 1 TB and then they may throttle your connections.

It also depends on your ISP... the 200mbps could be just throttled 1gbps or it could be some higher quality bandwidth... or the 1 gbps could be mixed with the signals for 50-100 other subscribers and mixed into a single 10gbps fiber so you may get inconsistent speeds, who knows..

 

I have Vodafone (former UPC) at home, 500 mbps down, 25 mbps up - I'm happy with it, could easily switch to the other main competitor and get 1 gbps both ways but the quality level would suffer (more variation in speeds across the world, depending on what fiber cables the ISP routes the data, higher latency in some places)

 

Personally the lowest internet speeds I'd be happy with is 20 / 10 ... that's enough for watching Youtube at 1080p (I'm watching 720p mostly) , enough for some downloads without buffering online radios and youtube, and 10mbps is fast enough to not be annoying. 

I have 12/8 unlimited on my phone and it's perfectly fine for phone internet.. 

[191x7]

Most people would find 200/20 way better than 100/100. For most, the download speed is the main need. You need more than 100 of upload only if you backup a lot of storage to the Cloud.

[avidgamer121]

i have 250mbps and very satisifed with it, there's no cheaper or higher data plan option in my locality.

[OddOod]

If I didn't have Plex, I'd probably be able to get by with as little as a solid 50Mbps symmetric. 
As it stands I love having 1Gb symmetric, it just makes my life that little bit easier.

[Needfuldoer]

I would absolutely take 10 times the speed for an additional $10/mo.

 

Just having symmetrical speeds would be a game-changer. I'm on cable and I get about 500 down, 20 up. It sounds like my ISP is finally beginning to roll out DOCSIS 4.0 in my area, and they claim their plans will finally have symmetrical speeds. 

[Kid.Lazer]

I'm a cheapskate and don't need the latest/greatest speeds. I 100% would take the 100 down/up plan to save $10 every month in perpetuity. My Comcast internet plan was originally 15 down, 2 up. Over the years, the speed has crept up and now I'm at 150/20. It is plenty fast for my usage.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, mkuilen said:

I'm just really curious about your opinion on the matter.

Id go with the 100 Mbps one. Because Im cheap. You could do multiple 4K streams and gaming should be fine. So it takes longer to download games, just do them over night. Im trying to get my folks to downgrade from 400/20 service to 100/20 service because it's cheaper. 

[LIGISTX]

It really depends how much you use the internet, and what you value. I value fast download times and I use the internet A LOT downloading large files… and uploading large files. I do a lot of photography so uploading files takes a while on a slow connection. Personally I would do the gigabit connection especially at the cost. I pay 100 a month for 500/25…… I very much wish I had a symmetric fiber option. 500 is more download then I need, but I need as much upload as I can get so I get the fastest plan possible. That said, nothing wrong with lost of download. 250 imo is a good number, 100 would be painfully slow when trying to download a new game with buddies. 

[Godlygamer23]

For the cost change alone, the fiber connection is obviously the best value, and even if you don't consume all of the bandwidth, consuming more bandwidth than either of the other options alone makes it worth the extra cost IMO.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Its always better to have more bandwidth than you need, than less.  But this always has to be weighed against the cost.

 

You also have to remember there is need vs want.

 

I have disabilities that means when I feel well enough to game, I need to game NOW before I'm too fatigued to do so.  Before getting Gigabit, often I'd have to wait 30-60 minutes for the game I want to play to update, at which point I no longer feel like playing it.  So I will be upgrading to 2Gbit once its available.

 

Also if you are a content creator, you're going to want more upload bandwidth than at least the upload speed cap of the service you use.  Same with cloud backups.

 

If you are just watching cat videos or other streaming content, 100Mbit is probably more than enough for most families, maybe 200Mbit for a bigger household and 40Mbit for a single person.

[dogwitch]

On 4/21/2024 at 4:57 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its always better to have more bandwidth than you need, than less.  But this always has to be weighed against the cost.

 

You also have to remember there is need vs want.

 

I have disabilities that means when I feel well enough to game, I need to game NOW before I'm too fatigued to do so.  Before getting Gigabit, often I'd have to wait 30-60 minutes for the game I want to play to update, at which point I no longer feel like playing it.  So I will be upgrading to 2Gbit once its available.

 

Also if you are a content creator, you're going to want more upload bandwidth than at least the upload speed cap of the service you use.  Same with cloud backups.

 

If you are just watching cat videos or other streaming content, 100Mbit is probably more than enough for most families, maybe 200Mbit for a bigger household and 40Mbit for a single person.

i do have a disability.

on top of that my OG fastest speed from isp was 40mb

but really 15 mb and it would go up and down randomly.(really kicker is i could not upload anything while dl)

cost was 55 a month. from centurylink.

with comcast now

its 800mb d and 10 up.

same price.

also the modem/gateway is way better the poc centruylink one.

 

yt,netflix etc does not buff anymore.

my out side camera work correctly finale now due to better up load speed.

 

[Donut417]

We just downgraded to 150/20 from 500/20. It was a $30 savings. Comcast already wants your first born child every month so giving them $30 less a month seemed like a good deal. The way I figured is it takes about 25 Mbps per 4K Netflix stream and we dont do any 4K content sooooooo, 150 Mbps should be enough for us. Sure my games download slower but I dont game that much anyway.

[dogwitch]

On 4/27/2024 at 8:36 AM, Donut417 said:

We just downgraded to 150/20 from 500/20. It was a $30 savings. Comcast already wants your first born child every month so giving them $30 less a month seemed like a good deal. The way I figured is it takes about 25 Mbps per 4K Netflix stream and we dont do any 4K content sooooooo, 150 Mbps should be enough for us. Sure my games download slower but I dont game that much anyway.

price your paying?

[Donut417]

Just now, dogwitch said:

price your paying?

Was paying $96 and now we are paying $66. We could get $10 off if we did auto pay, but my folks dont feel comfortable giving crapcast their banking info.

[dogwitch]

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Was paying $96 and now we are paying $66. We could get $10 off if we did auto pay, but my folks dont feel comfortable giving crapcast their banking info.

ok that a rip off from comcast.

ref above my post is what am paying for atm

[Donut417]

Just now, dogwitch said:

ok that a rip off from comcast.

ref above my post is what am paying for atm

You have another wired provider in your area. We do not. Its either Comcast, Satellite or Cellular.

[Tan3l6]

Remembering how "fast" was 256/64Kbps connection, my current 200/50Mbps is more than enough for anything.

[dogwitch]

14 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

You have another wired provider in your area. We do not. Its either Comcast, Satellite or Cellular.

the dsl abandon my county thru. fiber comin but very very slow.

[PorCus]

On 4/16/2024 at 2:21 PM, AndreiArgeanu said:

If the price difference is so small between them all, it only makes sense to get the best one in this particular case. But yeah, as long as it's reliable, 200mbps will be more than enough for a house hold of at least 4 people assumming they're not doing bandwidth intensive tasks too often, say the now and again game download on a console or something along the lines.

I agree that for the price difference, I'd get the highest one. However I don't know how reliable those ISPs are.

 

For some perspective, I was one of the lucky people to be able to get 25Gbps in Switzerland, and I moved back to 1Gbps, it's plenty enough for two. (The 25Gbps was a proof-of-concept, worked, did my speed test, I'm happy )

 

And for yet another perspective, I work for an ISP in Switzerland : I picked a switch where I currently have 9 customers connected at 1Gbps, looked at the 10G uplink, here is the graph of the port over a period of 2 months :

 

- The red line are the " 95pctile ", means what is measured 95 percent of the time, it's used for billing for some companies (we don't care),

- The port is monitored every 5 minutes, and takes the differences with the previous result to create an average, so you don't have the highest spikes visible,

- This port could go up to 10Gbps, and you see that even with 9 users on it, we never reach much more than 900Mbps in both ways, so I suspect the peak on that equipment was around 2Gbps at most.

- You see traffic all day, because we have residential mostly evening traffic) and commercial (mostly 9 to 5 traffic) on that equipment.

 

In summary, 1Gbps is plenty enough, you can roughly download 300 TBytes in a month at 1Gbits per second. If you're not a data hoarder, you're probably safe

 

Hope it helps !

Edited 23 hours ago by PorCus
clarification, corrections here and there (and again clarification)

[silencer12]

$55 is a steal for fiber. I pay $70 for mine. (Google).

 

I ditched spectrum / time-warner and glad I did. Overpriced.

[mynameisjuan]

6 hours ago, PorCus said:

I agree that for the price difference, I'd get the highest one. However I don't know how reliable those ISPs are.

 

For some perspective, I was one of the lucky people to be able to get 25Gbps in Switzerland, and I moved back to 1Gbps, it's plenty enough for two. (The 25Gbps was a proof-of-concept, worked, did my speed test, I'm happy )

 

And for yet another perspective, I work for an ISP in Switzerland : I picked a switch where I currently have 9 customers connected at 1Gbps, looked at the 10G uplink, here is the graph of the port over a period of 2 months :

 

- The red line are the " 95pctile ", means what is measured 95 percent of the time, it's used for billing for some companies (we don't care),

- The port is monitored every 5 minutes, and takes the differences with the previous result to create an average, so you don't have the highest spikes visible,

- This port could go up to 10Gbps, and you see that even with 9 users on it, we never reach much more than 900Mbps in both ways, so I suspect the peak on that equipment was around 2Gbps at most.

- You see traffic all day, because we have residential mostly evening traffic) and commercial (mostly 9 to 5 traffic) on that equipment.

 

In summary, 1Gbps is plenty enough, you can roughly download 300 TBytes in a month at 1Gbits per second. If you're not a data hoarder, you're probably safe

 

Hope it helps !

That lines up with my yearly audits going back 5+ years with the only addition of also using IPFIX in attempt to fill in gaps that polling averages masks. Overall, they still line up with your example.