Poll: What’s your internet download speed?

[mpeirce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack **I'm am a little leery of online speed tests, I assume the ISP recognizes speed tests and performs accordingly just for the test?

It's worth trying a few different speed tests sites. My go to tests are:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
http://www.speedtest.net
https://fast.com

[mpeirce]

> Hmmm... what are you people doing over the internet that requires over a 100 mbps?

It's nice to have some headroom since it's the nature of cable based internet to often slow down during the busiest times of day (say Friday night when everyone is watching Netflix).

I know both my DW and I will be streaming different video at different times of day. DS is home from college, so add that in. And over Christmas we had additional house guests...

Upload speed also comes into play for some of us. I sometimes access our home network when I'm away. For example, last week I was watching the local 10PM news streaming from our in-house TiVo, so having enough bandwidth to accomplish this is import to me.

Another application that is bandwidth hungry is screen sharing. I'm often doing tech support for relatives and I won't even bother unless they have a fast connection.

I used to care more when I was working. I would be downloading huge files like OS installation disk images. My old T1 line (1.5/1.5 Mbps) seemed fast in those days...

[pj.mask]

If you are having issues loading websites there are 2 items to check - ping and packet loss. Ping is the time it takes for your message to reach the other computer. Packet loss is how much data goes missing.

Simple explanation is you have a hose. You turn it on and it takes a few seconds for the water to reach the end (ping). Once it does you have a constant flow rate (download speed of 50mbps) but you may also have some leaks (packet loss) that cause you to miss info and have to request it again.

[USGrant1962]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koogie Hmmm... what are you people doing over the internet that requires over a 100 mbps? That's vastly more than required for browsing, emailing and even 4K streaming. Perhaps if you have a troop of Boy Scouts living at your house all using their devices at once, I could see it. Otherwise it seems like overkill. (I guess gamers use that much. I wouldn't know about that).

I probably don't need it, but he marginal download speed increase (+500%) beats the marginal cost increase (+20%). So it is kind of like using a 2% SWR!

At least with Xfinity the 25 down tier is rather expensive, and going to 100/150 doesn't add that much [they recently changed the plans so there is technically no 150 plan anymore, but mine has not changed].

It is really noticeably faster when downloading, say, a large game - AAA titles run in the 10s of gigabytes. In day-to-day use it doesn't make much difference, just a margin of safety.

[athena53]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DROPOUT I pay $70/month for 1GB Fiber through AT&T Via wifi on phones and laptops 15 ft away from Router (using speedtest) - we average about 250-300mbps.

I've got the same plan- just tested on my laptop, a few rooms away form the router, it's 128 mbps. A bit off from the advertised "Up to 1,000"!

[easysurfer]

A whopping 3.58 mbps. I have a very basic internet connection from Comcast. OTA otherwise .

[Corporateburnout]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer A whopping 3.58 mbps. I have a very basic internet connection from Comcast. OTA otherwise .

Congratulations. You won the prize for the slowest Internet speed

[DROPOUT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by athena53 I've got the same plan- just tested on my laptop, a few rooms away form the router, it's 128 mbps. A bit off from the advertised "Up to 1,000"!

That's actually quite good! The only time I have seen north of 500 was on the desktop that is hard wired. Anything north of 100 wirelessly is very good

[easysurfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporateburnout Congratulations. You won the prize for the slowest Internet speed

Surprised, but I actually can watch movies. without buffering, streaming with my Amazon FireTV device .

[Scrapr]

This thread just motivated me to test my speed then check with my provider for specials. Yay! For the same price I can upgrade to 100 mps (from 15) for the same price. I scheduled it for a couple weeks from now

#winning

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koogie Hmmm... what are you people doing over the internet that requires over a 100 mbps?

My son upgraded his to 100 mbps for online gaming. He says it works great. It would be overkill for me but I'd still probably take it. When I was working from home I'd have taken everything I could get.

[USGrant1962]

Quote:

Originally Posted by athena53 I've got the same plan- just tested on my laptop, a few rooms away form the router, it's 128 mbps. A bit off from the advertised "Up to 1,000"!

All you've done there is test your router - home WiFi speeds have almost nothing to do with ISP download speeds. 128 over WiFi from a few rooms away is very good.

[SecondCor521]

I pay for 100 through the local cable company. When I first got it I measured about 116 on my laptop over 5Ghz wifi.

My son, a gamer, has a wired connection to the modem+router. Most important for him is ping latency consistency so when he leads a head shot he can lead it the right amount consistently and have high kill rate percentages. Ping to the local speed test server is 25ms. In-game ping to the game server is 52ms and quite stable.

Over wifi, he got fast enough speeds but the ping was unreliable; we guessed/assumed this was due to lost packets. Having 5GHz Wifi helps a lot too; all of my neighbors, last I checked, were on 2.4GHz.

For this kid, it matters; he was #1 in the world on two heroes in Overwatch recently, and was overall 86th in the world, in a game that has 25M+ players. He goes into great detail and care about his monitor, mouse, keyboard, mousepad, chair, system, etc.

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Part of the reason I'm asking, XFinity just "upgraded" our speed like all customers*, and so far performance has been noticeably worse. When I speed test** I am indeed getting the new nominal speed, but sites take longer to load, and there is definitely more buffering and low-res when we stream now. We've even had 2-3 complete outages for up to 12 hours since the "upgrade," but our CSR tells us the outages are infrastructure, unrelated to the upgrade. It's only been a month or so, we'll wait and see, but so far not so good. Yes, I've rebooted our modem and router several times. *If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. **I'm am a little leery of online speed tests, I assume the ISP recognizes speed tests and performs accordingly just for the test?

We pay for 10 download and 2.5 upload.
The speed test shows: 11.5 download and 3.7 upload .

We just switched from Wow to Comcast, and I have also noticed there is a large delay before web page comes up, as if it's taking a long time to get the connection, but once connected the speed is fine.

I am very suspicious of speed tests by the company I'm subscribed with. One could use a VPN, then they have no idea who you are connecting to, but the VPN itself would introduce a delay factor.

[Dawg52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer Surprised, but I actually can watch movies. without buffering, streaming with my Amazon FireTV device .

A couple of years ago I had an economy package with Comcast and it was about 3 mpbs. Handled my situation fine. When I moved Comcast automatically 'upgraded' me to 25 for a year. Then the price went up. I tried to go back to 3 but they said it was no longer available. So I went to 10 and got a decent price. Just last month I got an email telling me they upgraded me to 25 at no extra cost. But my old promo plan runs out in April so I'm sure I will see another rake hike. I'm betting they will tell me I can't go back to 10 and 25 is the minimum now. I can't tell any difference in performance between 3 and 25.

[easysurfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dawg52 A couple of years ago I had an economy package with Comcast and it was about 3 mpbs. Handled my situation fine. When I moved Comcast automatically 'upgraded' me to 25 for a year. Then the price went up. I tried to go back to 3 but they said it was no longer available. So I went to 10 and got a decent price. Just last month I got an email telling me they upgraded me to 25 at no extra cost. But my old promo plan runs out in April so I'm sure I will see another rake hike. I'm betting they will tell me I can't go back to 10 and 25 is the minimum now. I can't tell any difference in performance between 3 and 25.

One reason why I'm just sticking with the basic plan. Don't want that discontinued on me. Plus, don't think this plan will suffer from price creep like other packaged plans.

I often get letters from Comcast begging me to upgrade or from AT&T begging me to switch over their internet and TV, but I'm good with my OTA and basic internet .

[W2R]

I am on an old Cox Cable mid level plan that is no longer offered, their "Preferred" plan. It is supposed to give me 50Mbps for $79.99.

They have recently substituted their "Preferred 100" plan, which is suppose to provide 100 Mbps for $84.99 but I am grandfathered into the "Preferred" plan.

F streams much more than I do, and recently upgraded to the "Preferred 100" plan. His streaming is greatly improved and buffering time seems to have vanished. Oddly, when he does speed tests they are abominable but he is getting better performance despite that.

I prefer saving the $5/month since I always get speeds at least as good as shown below and that is all I need (I don't stream TV more than an hour a month, and do not do online gaming). Right now my main gripe with Cox is not the speed, but their outages and high fees.

Twenty years ago I had my own T1 connection at work at the university. That was pretty cool for the time, I must admit. If Google fiber ever comes here, I would sign up right away. But there are no plans for that any time soon.

Here is my speed test with Cox Preferred:

[Dawg52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer One reason why I'm just sticking with the basic plan. Don't want that discontinued on me. Plus, don't think this plan will suffer from price creep like other packaged plans. I often get letters from Comcast begging me to upgrade or from AT&T begging me to switch over their internet and TV, but I'm good with my OTA and basic internet .

When I moved I initiated a transfer of service to the new location. Comcast bumped it on their own w/o asking. They gave me the old rate for a year and that is when I found out about the upgrade. I guess they had a reason for the 'free' upgrade. No going back at that point.

[skipro33]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Part of the reason I'm asking, XFinity just "upgraded" our speed like all customers*, and so far performance has been noticeably worse. When I speed test** I am indeed getting the new nominal speed, but sites take longer to load, and there is definitely more buffering and low-res when we stream now. We've even had 2-3 complete outages for up to 12 hours since the "upgrade," but our CSR tells us the outages are infrastructure, unrelated to the upgrade. It's only been a month or so, we'll wait and see, but so far not so good. Yes, I've rebooted our modem and router several times. *If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. **I'm am a little leery of online speed tests, I assume the ISP recognizes speed tests and performs accordingly just for the test?

I'm also an Xfinity customer and got the same notice. My speed before and after was 50mbs plus or minus. The 250 and higher service they say I'm paying for is for the 5ghz wifi only, not the 2.5ghz just about everything I own has for wifi. I suspect the increase we were touted was for the 5ghz or the ethernet, not the 2.5ghz wifi. I do have a TV that has 5ghz, but I honestly can not tell the difference in speed, nor can I measure it as there isn't any speed test app on the TV.

I once called to complain I was not getting the speed service I was paying for. They sent a guy out and he's the one who told me the quoted speed was for 5ghz, not the 2.5 and that my laptop was too old and didn't have the type of wifi to utilize 5ghz. He did give me a newer router though at no cost and there was no charge for his visit.

[RonBoyd]

IP Speed.JPG

https://fast.com/

Quote:

There's a minimum recommended internet speed for streaming video from websites and services, such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon. Some users may not need to worry about their available bandwidth because they can easily stream high-def content, but others should be aware.

https://www.lifewire.com/internet-sp...iewing-1847401