Internet Speed

joshgotro

How much do I really need? One person connecting to Wi-Fi and a laptop wired but rarely ever used. My biggest usage is Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The biggest file I've downloaded in the last six months was Ubuntu. My browsing habits don't venture far from Reddit, Wikipedia, these forums, Craigslist, and academic research.

School, work, gym, and just about every other establishment I visit has WiFi.

What speed do I really need without throwing all my funbucks at an ISP?

Luiane

The biggest usage that you listed is Netflix/ other streaming - are you watching 4k videos or what's the image quality?

SanderJK

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

joshgotro

Luiane wrote: »

The biggest usage that you listed is Netflix/ other streaming - are you watching 4k videos or what's the image quality?

Nothing 4K. HD probably.

joshgotro

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

zepherin

joshgotro wrote: »

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

Get the fiber if it is available and within budget.

You'll probably want at least 50 down 10 up. If it's fiber you can usually get a 125/25 plan at a pretty reasonable price.

BlazeFire

zepherin wrote: »

joshgotro wrote: »

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

Get the fiber if it is available and within budget.

You'll probably want at least 50 down 10 up. If it's fiber you can usually get a 125/25 plan at a pretty reasonable price.

That seems excessive for OP's use case. I would think 25 down would be lots for streaming.

e: Cincinnati Bell's website is showing the same promotional price ($39.99) for the 10, 20, 30, and 50 Mbps plans for the first 12 months.

zepherin

BlazeFire wrote: »

zepherin wrote: »

joshgotro wrote: »

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

Get the fiber if it is available and within budget.

You'll probably want at least 50 down 10 up. If it's fiber you can usually get a 125/25 plan at a pretty reasonable price.

That seems excessive for OP's use case. I would think 25 down would be lots for streaming.

e: Cincinnati Bell's website is showing the same promotional price ($39.99) for the 10, 20, 30, and 50 Mbps plans for the first 12 months.

Yeah but often they do 25 down and 2 or 3 upstream and the upstream has an effect on how much downstream you have, it artificially limits how fast you can download. When I took my TCP/IP class (which was 15 years ago, so things have radically changed), at really low speeds your downstream could really only be about twice your upstream, with DSL and the lower speed cable it was 8 to 1. I don't know what that is any more.

I do know that fiber tends to be symmetrical and isn't reliant on the older data nodes that cable is.

If you can get fiber go for it.

Burtletoy

I mean, they'd love to sell you the upgrade anyways. Might as well try the lowest teir first and if you can't steam good, just upgrade.

I've been on the cheapest plan Comcast offers in WA, and I can stream in HD from Netflix no problem.


Edit: I don't do much online gaming anymore, and I can't even notice that I don't have Google fiber anymore. Maybe AAA steam games take longer to download? I downloaded Witcher 3 the other night, and it did take more than a few minutes, I guess...

Shadowfire

zepherin wrote: »

BlazeFire wrote: »

zepherin wrote: »

joshgotro wrote: »

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

Get the fiber if it is available and within budget.

You'll probably want at least 50 down 10 up. If it's fiber you can usually get a 125/25 plan at a pretty reasonable price.

That seems excessive for OP's use case. I would think 25 down would be lots for streaming.

e: Cincinnati Bell's website is showing the same promotional price ($39.99) for the 10, 20, 30, and 50 Mbps plans for the first 12 months.

Yeah but often they do 25 down and 2 or 3 upstream and the upstream has an effect on how much downstream you have, it artificially limits how fast you can download. When I took my TCP/IP class (which was 15 years ago, so things have radically changed), at really low speeds your downstream could really only be about twice your upstream, with DSL and the lower speed cable it was 8 to 1. I don't know what that is any more.

I do know that fiber tends to be symmetrical and isn't reliant on the older data nodes that cable is.

If you can get fiber go for it.

Typically 10:1 these days.

BlindZenDriver

I'd second starting with the slowest available one if budget is a factor.
More speed is nice and it does also make surfing faster, however for that even more important is running a adblocker - that makes so many websites not only faster to load but also safer and better to read as there is less noise.

Quid

My wife and I stream and game no problem at 40 mb. I suspect you’ll be plenty fine on the lowest tier I assume is around 25. Worst case is you upgrade if it’s unsat.

OnTheLastCastle

zepherin wrote: »

joshgotro wrote: »

SanderJK wrote: »

Streaming is usually about 5mbit for HD, 25mbit for uhd.

Note that it depends on the tech if the promised speed is actually achieved.
And how shitty the ISP is, which is harder to gauge.
However changing a contract upwards is usually easy enough. So I would start at what you think may be enough, and call them if you need more.

Downgrading contracts usually doesn't go smoothly.

The two big boys in town are Spectrum and Cincinnati Bell, the latter being fiber.

Get the fiber if it is available and within budget.

You'll probably want at least 50 down 10 up. If it's fiber you can usually get a 125/25 plan at a pretty reasonable price.

That is far more internet than one person needs. The 25mb down is correct on what you need for UHD. You will not have multiple UHD streams and there is nothing else he's doing that would in any way tax that.

Fiber is a 1:1 down/up speed and cable tends to be 5:1 or 10:1 IME. As in your 50mb down would be 5mb up.

The Wolfman

Just to give some real numbers and put it in perspective, 50 megabits equates to about 6 megabytes a second. A gigabyte in 3 minutes. For stuff like games, that's still comfortably fast... at least for the time being (when games start regularly breaking the 100 gig mark is another matter). For streaming it's more than enough. For generic web browsing it's overkill. Even 25 is comfortable for streaming.

Anything above 50 basically amounts to "How fast do you need to download your porn".

zepherin

The Wolfman wrote: »

Just to give some real numbers and put it in perspective, 50 megabits equates to about 6 megabytes a second. A gigabyte in 3 minutes. For stuff like games, that's still comfortably fast... at least for the time being (when games start regularly breaking the 100 gig mark is another matter). For streaming it's more than enough. For generic web browsing it's overkill. Even 25 is comfortable for streaming.

Anything above 50 basically amounts to "How fast do you need to download your porn".

At that level it's more about how congested your nodes are, and if your wifi is shit.

joshgotro

Thanks for all the advice guys.

m!ttens

I have Cinici Bell and their uptime is fantastic. I think we've had one outage in 4 years. Consistently fast (usually between 95-120% of advertised speed) and no latency issues either.

OnTheLastCastle

I check mine regularly and get above the speeds I was advertised. Had cable in Texas and fiber now in Iowa. Use the speedtest, you can google it.

Mugsley

I get advertised speed; but the speed I'm paying for tends to not be supported by the various servers handing out the info that's getting downloaded. So it still feels "slow."