500mb vs 1gb - any point?

DrPhilG

I currently have FTTH with a 500mb package. I regularly have results all around the house (using Unifi APs) of 400-450mb on wifi.

I can get a 1gb package for another €10 a month, but I'm just wondering what people's experiences are. If I jump to 1gb, would that likely result in about 800-900mb on wifi? The likes of the sky box, xbox, CCTV recorder etc are hard wired from a Unifi switch which is connected to the router.

I'm just wondering if there's really any need given that I already have a good strength or am I just being greedy!

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058384141/500mb-vs-1gb-any-point

I say this as a heavy internet user - No its not worth it. Especially as the extra 10 euro a month is probably the introductory offer and could well go up.

Without going too technical, if your network at home is using Wifi 5, it has a maximum throughput of 3.5 Gigabits per second, which is a maximum transfer rate of 437 Megabytes a second. So upgrading to 1Gb will not see faster transfer rates.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122948310#Comment_122948310

But the fibre is 1 Gigabit per second surely, not 1 Gigabyte per second?

If someone was selling 1 Gigabyte per second internet for an extra €10 I'd probably bite the hand off them since that would be 8 Gigabits 😁

As regards speed, it might make some difference to streaming or downloading but for regular browsing it's unlikely to have a noticeable impact.

As far as I know most of the delays for web browsing is coming from downloading the website content (images, javascript, stylesheets, etc.) from an edge server.

Once you've done this the website basically operates as a small application from your cache and just queries an API on the server for fresh data

xabi

Short answer, no

KildareP

There isn't. The main reason for going to 1Gb or 2Gb is for the increased upload (100Mb and 200Mb, respectively, compared to 50Mb on 500Mb).

If WiFi is your main means of access, then the download speeds you're getting are as good as it'll get for the majority of devices. You can go towards 1Gb using 160MHz channels which require the newer/higher end UniFi APs along with modern devices to be able to support that.

You'll also find a lot of sites and services won't actually push 1Gb sustained download, never mind 2Gb, particularly during peak hours so you could spend all this money upgrading everything only to find the speeds are no faster than they were when you were using the services anyway.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122948310#Comment_122948310

You're mixing up units. A "500" connection is 500 megabits per second. That's around 60 megabytes/s. 437 megabytes/s is far faster than that - although in reality, 3.5 gigabits is a theoretical limit, actual speeds will be far slower.

@DrPhilG, if your WiFi network is capable of 1000mbps, then you will see an improvement. However, will that make any practical difference? Are you finding your internet speed to be an actual limiting factor, and doing what?

JMcL

I'd say no, and I'm a heavy user. I've a 500mb connection again with Ubiquiti APs and it supports all my work use cases which often involves shipping large amounts of data both ways. In family use, it easily supports 5 of us with multiple simultaneous 4K/HD streams plus social media and is only scratching itself.

The only reason to look above it is as others have said the upload which will typically go from 50mb to 100mb, but TBH you'd want to be constantly uploading very large files (legit ones of course !!! :-) ), or be very impatient to justify it. I say this as this really being the first internet connectivity I've had that's been fit for purpose for me.

LambshankRedemption

But the fibre is 1 Gigabit per second surely, not 1 Gigabyte per second?

Yes. Connection speed is always quoted in bits. The transfer rate is 1/8th of the connection speed.

You're mixing up units. A "500" connection is 500 mega

bits

 per second. That's around 60 megabytes/s. 437 megabytes/s is far faster than that - although in reality, 3.5 gigabits is a theoretical limit, actual speeds will be far slower.

Where did you get that I an mixing up units??

I quoted bits and bytes in my post:

Without going too technical, if your network at home is using Wifi 5, it has a maximum throughput of 3.5 Gigabits per second, which is a maximum transfer rate of 437 Megabytes a second.

Please tell me which bit is wrong?

thereiver

I don't think you,ll see any improvement it's not worth 10 euro extra per month most people use wifi on phones tablets and maybe have a console or a PC with Ethernet cable connection to the router

Wanderer78

na save your cash, you ll be upgraded eventually in time, and not notice much difference, if any at all….

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122949077#Comment_122949077

You said that WiFi 5 allows for a speed of 3.5 gigabits/s, so upgrading their connection from 500 megabits/s to 1 gigabit/s won't mean any improvement. That's incorrect.

If their WiFi is actually capable of delivering speeds of 3.5Gbps, then their external connection of 0.5Gbps is a limiting factor, and upgrading to 1Gbps will make a difference.

DrPhilG

Thanks folks, pretty conclusive then. I use wifi for the vast majority of my connections, bar occasionally downloading a film on Sky etc. Streaming on smart TVs also hard wired. I've never (not since the old Eir 3mb days) found downloading to be slow or cumbersome and I do very little uploading.

So problem solved. All I need to do now is figure out how the feck VOIP works but I'm getting some help on that too!

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122949238#Comment_122949238

The OP asked:

If I jump to 1gb, would that likely result in about 800-900mb on wifi?

My simplified answer was no.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122949763#Comment_122949763

If their WiFi is capable of 3.5Gbps (which was your stated reasoning behind saying no), then your answer is wrong, they would see an increase in WiFi speeds from 400-450 to 800-900

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122949779#Comment_122949779

OK I will concede that point. Mainly because I dont have time to get into more detail.

To the OP's other question:

I'm just wondering if there's really any need given that I already have a good strength or am I just being greedy!

I stand by my opinion, no there is no need. Theoretical maximum speeds is one thing, actual speeds are quite another and I wager the OP would see no significant increase at all.

CalamariFritti

I have had that upgrade. Mostly it was because my contract was up and I got it with practically no extra charge.

And yes some (few) downloads are now twice as fast. But we're a 2 person household and to us it makes no truly tangible difference to our internet use whatsoever.

But if you're having 4 data hungry teenagers hogging the web it may make a difference.

DrPhilG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122950901#Comment_122950901

Nope, also a 2 person household.

Blazer

I say yes and I'm a not so heavy user.

The kids want to download an xbox game? Sure fire away. They max out at about 200megs anyway so I can do it for both of them at the same time while I continue to get 600 on my pc and can game away and download away to my hearts content.

As a heavy gamer I no longer need to store games I don't play ..just uninstall them..and just download them again in 15 mins if I need to.

I just did a reinstall of my pc,, downloaded BO6 (140Gb) , DayZ (70Gb) , Stalker etc and all done and dusted.

As a heavy user yes absolutely especially with kids in the house.

spuddy

Does anyone know why upload speeds are only a 1/10th of the download speeds in Ireland?

Take a look at other EU countries, France for instance offers significantly higher speeds as standard.

https://www-free-fr.translate.goog/freebox/comparer-nos-offres-freebox/?name=Freebox+Pop&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122955259#Comment_122955259

It's not just Ireland it is all over the world. The main reason is, few people need upload capacity anywhere near their download bandwidth.

You want to download a movie or a game that is 2GB in size, your browser sends a request like

GET http://www.netflocks.com/movies/Dirty.Dancing.MP4 HTTP/1.1

Host: netflocks.com

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5

Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,Accept-Language: en-usAccept-Encoding: gzip,deflateAccept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8

Cache-Control: no-cache

The request is less than 1KB in size, even though you are downloading 2 gigabytes. So why would you need large upload?

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122957298#Comment_122957298

Well there is quite a bit more to it than that with regards to data going the other way but essentially yes, it's only hosters who need upload bandwidth. But even so, surely there are plenty of amateur, hobby, small business sites operating privately.

LambshankRedemption

But even so, surely there are plenty of amateur, hobby, small business sites operating privately.

There is, and there are services available to them. All the providers offer non contended and symmetric packages.

JMcL

Regarding upload speed. as others have said, there's less need for bandwidth for most uses, but you can have too little.

Before getting fibre I had an utterly rubbish DSL connection from Vodafone that topped out about 12mb/s down 600kb/s up. Trying to send any large files was obviously painful, but this also coincided with the kids getting phones, and lockdown with remote learning etc. The slightest thing would saturate the upstream bandwidth, but this in turn killed downstream - even just normal web browsing. The reason being that for every data packet that came down, the corresponding ACK (tiny piece of data that tells the sender the data has been received) got blocked resulting in the server needlessly resending data.

kyote00

surely video calls, big email attachments and git push etc need good upload speeds

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123057080#Comment_123057080

no they really dont

video is nothing git push is less. big email attachments are a bad idea anyway and if you must who cares really whether it takes 5 minutes or 20 minutes to send?

JMcL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123057080#Comment_123057080

Not really as previous poster said. From the Zoom website, upstream for 1080p group calls is <4Mb/s (megabits). That would be very good quality and lower resolutions are usually fine. I try to avoid big email attachments, but would push a fair few hi res photos and videos out to Smugmug (around 7MB for a photo), and it's not instant of course, but I can still send upwards of 50 out in a few minutes. Same for Git pushes - I'd usually be doing several a day, but they're really quite small (I do try to avoid checking in large files though).

So all the above will bother DSL or 4G connection, but fibre or a good 5G signal will be scratching itself.