Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

Not with the size of game updates now, they're frequently 100GB which is a 2.5 hour download at 100Mbps (so you're leaving some capacity for the other people accessing the internet) and only 16 minutes at 900Mbps.

The way the updates work is you are frequently prevented from launching older versions of the game, so the existence of an update stops you from playing until it's completed. Even if an update of that size only happens every two months the delay is not worth the small cost savings when the nature of FTTP means if you can get 150Mbps then you can get a gigabit.

Not everybody buying the fastest service available to them is doing it because they've been misled by marketing, lots of people are capable of assessing their needs and making appropriate decisions.

I work from home and if I found myself regularly shifting files around that were much larger than the ~20GB or so that I deal with at the moment I'd be upgrading my 500Mbps to 1Gbps the same day, time is money.

Edited by jpm (Mon 26-Aug-24 14:35:57)

In reply to a post by broadband66:

150 should be more than enough.

I know some companies that have branch offices with 50 to 100 staff, their connection to the main office is a 100 Mbps symmetric leased line (for 100 people).. It is home users that have these high speeds.

In reply to a post by jpm:

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Out of curiosity.

Surely 20mbps each would be more than adequate. 5 machines connected simultaneously.

150 should be more than enough.

Not with the size of game updates now, they're frequently 100GB which is a 2.5 hour download at 100Mbps (so you're leaving some capacity for the other people accessing the internet) and only 16 minutes at 900Mbps.

The way the updates work is you are frequently prevented from launching older versions of the game, so the existence of an update stops you from playing until it's completed. Even if an update of that size only happens every two months the delay is not worth the small cost savings when the nature of FTTP means if you can get 150Mbps then you can get a gigabit.

Not everybody buying the fastest service available to them is doing it because they've been misled by marketing, lots of people are capable of assessing their needs and making appropriate decisions.

I work from home and if I found myself regularly shifting files around that were much larger than the ~20GB or so that I deal with at the moment I'd be upgrading my 500Mbps to 1Gbps the same day, time is money.

You'll be lucky, in my experience, if game update servers will give you 900Mbps or anything near to that.

In reply to a post by Rhynchelma:

You'll be lucky, in my experience, if game update servers will give you 900Mbps or anything near to that.

I notice with steam that a lot of time it don't even get to 500Mb/s. so getting 1Gb/s would be almost impossible,


Not that I am a big games player, and a lot of my games are older ones, but when I had a hard drive problem a couple of months ago, i had to reinstall all the games, only now and again it would burst to the full speed of what my broadband is capable off

This is the problem and a lot of people don't have the knowledge to know, they don't require it

Ever been to Currys and they try to upsell you on the laptop, TV, vacuum cleaner etc? If you don't tell them specifically what you want they will look to sell you whatever their management are currently pushing (either to max profit or to get rid of old stock). And of course when you buy that TV they will tell you that you will need a new HDMI cable for £50.

Or when you buy a pair of shoes and they try to sell you the shoe protection and cleaning gubbins.

Or when you are in a restaurant and they will try to push the specials or convince you to have a desert (the waiting staff are their as much to try and increase the take per customer as they are to serve you the food - a higher income per customer means better profit for the restaurant).

All of these and many more are examples of up selling. Every industry does it to maximise their profits. I am not surprised that ISPs do the same - income per customer is a critical number and the higher it is the better your bottom line generally looks.

Oh dear, good point but there is now so much more for this fella zyborg47 to go on a tangent about.

Surely he is still on his OP topic ?

In reply to a post by ian72:

This is the problem and a lot of people don't have the knowledge to know, they don't require it

Ever been to Currys and they try to upsell you on the laptop, TV, vacuum cleaner etc? If you don't tell them specifically what you want they will look to sell you whatever their management are currently pushing (either to max profit or to get rid of old stock). And of course when you buy that TV they will tell you that you will need a new HDMI cable for £50.

Not for many years have I been to Currys, the last white goods I got, which was the Freezer I got from a local company, Vacuum cleaner from Amazon, TV from Argos, online, they do try and sell you some insurance, but doing it online means just ignore it.

i know they do try to upsell things, certainly PC world that used to try and sell more powerful machines than what the person needed. The last time I got anything from Currys was my Huawei phone a few years ago, I went in, told them what I wanted and told them not to try and sell me anything else, in and out in 10 minutes.

oh yeah, the HDMI cables with gold connections, to make the ones stand up better and the Zeros rounder. As I said, I got my last Tv from Argos and ordered it online.

Or when you buy a pair of shoes and they try to sell you the shoe protection and cleaning gubbins.

Not had that for years, but then again I order my shoes online from Shoe zone and then pick them up

Or when you are in a restaurant and they will try to push the specials or convince you to have a desert (the waiting staff are their as much to try and increase the take per customer as they are to serve you the food - a higher income per customer means better profit for the restaurant).

I don't do restaurants, I pop into a cafe now and again, but restaurants is not me.

All of these and many more are examples of up selling. Every industry does it to maximise their profits. I am not surprised that ISPs do the same - income per customer is a critical number and the higher it is the better your bottom line generally looks.

The difference is they don't keep trying to upsell, you're on a broadband service, and they have your email address, and they can keep pushing. Thankfully most do have a leave me alone tick box in the contact preferences and most do follow that, apart from Talk Talk.

Plusnet contacted me twice to do with selling me stuff, one was their TV service, but I told them I don't have a Tv licence and the other was to do with their mobile phone service. No point in contacting me about updating my broadband, as I was on the fastest speed I could get. They did contact me when my contracts were coming to the end.


Zzoomm, been very good, they sent me emails when they were doing maintenance and when we had that bit of a problem when someone decided to cut the fibre at the start of my time with them, but that was it until my contract came up for renewal, and they were even late contacting me about that

i thought they would have sent me emails asking me about going to a faster speed, but they have not.

You are ignoring the fact that these things happen all the time because you happen to not use those places.

We frequent the odd restaurants. Most of them if I don't say "no marketing" will contact me every few months to do offers or to suggest I book again.

If I browse an item on Amazon I will get an email a couple of days later suggesting I might want to buy it.

I bought some headphones online and I get regular emails about their new headphones suggesting I might want to upgrade. Do I need the new upgrade headphones? Probably not. Might I consider it if they are slightly better despite not making a huge difference? Possibly. Are they wrong to try and tempt me?

These are the same as the ISP. You say you can opt out - which you can with all of these and if they ignore that opt out then they are in breach of GDPR marketing rules.

You won't take any examples if they don't specifically apply to you. All companies do this but somehow you think an ISP should be different and not attempt to sway their customers towards higher end products.