Recommend Internet Speed

Hey!

I'm currently paying $70 monthly for 5Mbps DSL internet (I know, super expensive), and have the offer of $75 for 20Mbps, and $85 for 30Mbps cable internet. Is 30Mbps really worth it? I mean are there sites I can utilize the full 30Mbps?

And as you can imagine, both would be a huge change!

Edit: I'ts Mbps not MB

Edited by deleted (Fri 18-Nov-11 01:27:25)

Are you in the USA? In the UK you can get "Up to" 24 Mbps ADSL2+ BB for under 20 GBP, provided your exchange has the necessary ISPs. What exchange? What does http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search link to?

I presume that the figures you quote are speeds in Megabits/sec and not usage limits in MegaBytes as they indicate. For non-cable, any speeds you are quoted will be "Up to"; what you will get will depend very much on the length of your line. Post your current router stats so we can assess this.

Assuming you mean Mb not MB, (1 Byte = 8 bits), 5Mbps is fairly slow as you say. 20 is quite common over here and many people have ditched it for 40 or 50Mbps which is now getting quite widespread.

Regarding sites that can utilize it, most popular ones have huge capacity, but the more users that get high speeds the more they will come under pressure to increase it.

Remember that DSL actual connection speed depends very much on the line length. So here we are sold "up to 20Mbps". If you are fairly close to the phone exchange we may get that, but if we are a long way away we might only get 6Mbps.

Then there is the question you raise about the site you are reading from.

Then over here we also have a large number of suppliers (ISPs) available to most homes, and the capacity the supplier buys to cater for their customers' needs varies a lot. I think where you are you may have a very limited choice.

My view is that for a single user at home the 20Mbps is more than adequate for everything except Torrents (P2P). For a home that has parents with a computer each and 2-3 kids with one as well on YouTube/Twitter/Facebook etc all the time, or anyone doing lots of big downloads, then the faster the better.

Then there is gaming. Again, for a single user not doing a download 5Mbps is fine. But even on 20Mbps, if one user in the home is downloading a film using P2P them someone else in that home doing gaming is going to get killed.

Cable here doesn't suffer because of distance, but again the throughput can be good or bad compared to the connection speed.

I live in Puerto Rico (caribbean). It's the first time wer'e getting these speeds here. We only have two Internet Providers (one DSL, one Cable provider).

Yeah your'e right, it's Mbps, sorry. A friend of mine got the 10Mbps today and he speed tested for 10.45Mbps, and he lives about 3 minutes away from the cable provider. I live about 10 minutes away from the cable provider, so I guess it should be a pretty good signal.

I don't know how to get the router stats, but it's this router for the current dsl, I would get a cable modem included with the cable provider thou:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedTouch

This is the link to the offer (if it's in spanish, you can change to English at the top-right corner):
http://www.libertypr.com/internet/

Thanks alot!

Thanks alot guys. I think I'm leaning more towards the 30Mbps yeah extreme!

What speeds do you guys have, and what's your max download speed in kbps for reference?

Also, I heard that you can speed cap the other computers in the house, but I needed a specific router and some software, which I believe started with "W". Please help if you know this info.

Thanks again.

I'm would jump on the 30Mbps straight away if i was getting 5Mbps

I currently get 14Mbps (14,000kbps) on dsl.

Hi . It all depends on what you are actually looking for. If you are wanting to download tv shows etc then you can use newsgroups such as astraweb and a client like sabnzb to max out your connection. $75 for 20 Mbps compared to $70 for 5 is a no-brainer.

Unlike DSL, cable internet is not dependent on line length to get good speeds.

Note what kamelion says in this post about cable connection speed not affected by length, but DSL is. He is right.

That's why I said DSL in my first reply. I knew it was going to be a long post so assumed you would get the message there without me making it any longer, but perhaps I should have.

However on both DSL and cable, connection speed is not the same as throughput. No ISP in the world buys enough capacity for every customer to be downloading at full speed at the same time. So if everyone in the US watched the baseball finals online at the same time the thing would collapse.

So check with your friend what actual speeds he gets on cable at times that major sports events are on. And with anyone you know on a decent DSL connection.