UPC 20mb - fast enough for for streaming?

Danny2580

Hi all,

Currently on Eircom Next Gen getting speeds of around 5mb download. Line is quite reliable. Moving to a UPC area soon and considering getting their 20mb package. It seems from their website and obviously from customer care that they try to deflect people away from the 20mb package and towards higher speed packages. I don't game online but I watch live streams fairly heavily, does anyone have experience of the 20mb UPC line - what speeds and reliability can I actually expect? Will they deliberately give me piss poor service in order to make me upgrade to a more expensive package? I have a good linksys router, network shared between two people. Thanks in advance!

NIMAN

If you get a true 20meg then I can't see you having any issue.

I have a 2.5meg Vodafone line and the majority of stuff I stream runs ok.

PucaMama

i have upc, and use a certain site and tool to download films. although i have the pack above the 20 mb pack, i have never got above 3mb on a download and i use an addon to speed up my downloads.

Kensington

Is that 3MB (MegaBytes) or 3 Mb (Megabits)?
3MB is very good for 20Mb, 3Mb is obviously not!

I have 25Mb, Netflix always gives me X-High HD, no stuttering or buffering.

aN.Droid

PucaMama wrote: »

i have upc, and use a certain site and tool to download films. although i have the pack above the 20 mb pack, i have never got above 3mb on a download and i use an addon to speed up my downloads.

Mb and MB are two different units.To get your true download speed you divide by 8 so if you have a 20 Mb connection you theoretical download limit would be 2.5MB per second.

I am on the 100mb package and my theoretical limit is 12.5MB and 95% of the time I get this or slightly more.

To answer the ops question, 20mb is plenty to stream content.

mfdc

We switched to UPC a couple of months ago and I've had problems with streaming video since. Went from 8mb DSL to 25mb, and whereas before I could usually watch YouTube videos at the 720p setting with no buffering, now it's a crapshoot. The same has happened on the few occasions I've tried to watch a stream on justin.tv or twitch.tv, going to the higher quality settings and there's a good chance it will stutter and buffer constantly where it played fine on DSL.

I have to think that UPC are doing some kind of shaping on streaming video traffic, that or contention has some strange effect on streaming video specifically - I can go download a file straight after a stuttering stream and have it come down at 2.8mbps no problem.

croo

Limericks wrote: »

To get your true download speed you divide by 8

Technically that is correct but there are always overheads of thing like parity bit so I find a division by 10 is more accurate - and the math is a lot easier too

Keep in mind too people, that at these speeds you begin to reach the limits of typial 802.11g wireless - around 2MB/s is the typical limit I see when copying large file around my own home network. Even if you do have a newer N network some older devices (like a phone for example) might be causing it to step down to the G speeds.

D

Have UPC 25 line
never had major problems streaming
usually get around 1.9-2.2 for downloads
although at peak hours it can drop to around 1.2-1.4

starviewadams

We had 20mb when we first signed up to UPC and it was perfect for streaming.Upgraded to 50mb a few months back mainly just to get rid of the Cisco EPC router which didn't ahve the best wireless range.

miralize

Past few months the service has been poor for me, used to get 2800mbps, now lucky to get around 1800mpbs, and downloading speeds have decreased to an almost steady 2.5Mb/s to a paltry (in comparison) 800kb/s. It should still be fine, but be warned!

aN.Droid

miralize wrote: »

Past few months the service has been poor for me, used to get 2800mbps, now lucky to get around 1800mpbs, and downloading speeds have decreased to an almost steady 2.5Mb/s to a paltry (in comparison) 800kb/s. It should still be fine, but be warned!

Hey Miralize,

Where are you located that you are getting these speeds? Have you turned off the firewall settings in the router (I find it makes downloads about 50% slower when turned on for me) Your router may have had an automatic reset or update and have had it's settings reset (happened me a handful of times) so I would check that!

If these settings are fine then I would give UPC a call, they should be able to do a line test and see where the problem lies.

miralize

I've changhed all the modem settings to be optimal for downloading. UPC have reset them a few times, but I've saved a copy of my settings so that I can restore them quickly if necessary.

Also called UPC a few times, and they have acknowledged that there was an issue on the line. That issue was resolved, and it was working fine for a few weeks, but the slow speeds are more common now, leading me to believe that there must be more people on my line than before.

MrJoeSoap

Have 50meg UPC myself and watch Ice Hockey games nightly at 3000Kbps without any bother.