Poll: What’s your internet download speed?

[Midpack]

I’m sure the ranges I’ve chosen fit some better than others, and some services are below and above the top and bottom, I tried.

 

[jfn111]

I think my Xfinity is advertised at 250 mbps.
They just did another enhancement and it's now testing around 290 mbps.

 

[Danmar]

Toronto Condo about 35, Arizona house about the same, Canmore house around 20, but the real problem is the lakehouse at only around 5. This is because the lakehouse is a radio system with an antenna way up one of the trees and a transmission tower on the other side of the lake. Streaming Netflix there is sometimes an issue with excessive buffering.

Surprised how fast some of the speeds are.

 

[braumeister]

This is a good source for testing your connection:

https://sourceforge.net/speedtest

 

[mpeirce]

Our provider (WOW) guarantees 100Mbps service but delivers 110 at our service level. Nice.

 

[lwp2017]

Verizon mobile, rural area. 40mbps download. 15 mbps uploads.
Just checked it on speedtest.

I am in close proximity to the Verizon tower.

Previously had AT&T mobile. Internet download was 3 Mbps
Their local signal was a small portable antenna on wheels.

 

[Corporateburnout]

Verison Fios 75 Mbps plan tested @ 90 Mbps download and 80 Mbps upload. More than enough to satisfy our needs

 

[USGrant1962]

I pay for 150 down on Xfinity, but usually test out at ~235. Yay!

 

[Scrapr]

About 15 on DSL

Alternative in town is the cable provider with really poor service. Monopoly in our town so no incentive to improve

Once in a while will get some buffering on Netflix. I should ask about upgrades

 

[Cobra9777]

We have 50/50 Frontier FiOS (formerly Verizon). Had it since 2006 when they first installed fiber down our street. This is true fiber-to-the-home, so the stability and reliability is amazing. They offer up to 500/500 but we've never had any issue whatsoever with 50 down; and it's nice to have 50 up as well.

 

[scrabbler1]

I have Optimum and it's 68 mbps, toward their low end but far from their lowest.

 

[gauss]

To clarify the poll --Are we voting on marketed speed or actual/measured speed?

-gauss

 

[hesperus]

65 mbps @ Charter Spectrum for $65 mo. There's fiber running at 150+ that goes up and down the main ave, but no spur yet to us.

 

[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).

 

[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.

 

[Midpack]

To clarify the poll --Are we voting on marketed speed or actual/measured speed?

-gauss

Advertised or marketed speed, more people know their advertised speed than actual speed (usually higher). Thanks.

 

[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?

 

[HillCountry]

Enough to sustain 4 streaming video. Wifi router is as important as the speed to the door.

 

[6miths]

We test out at 85 over Wifi. DS games a bit so he uses a direct wired connect but I don't know whether there is a significant speed difference there but I think they are most interested in latency which is better with ethernet.

 

[Corporateburnout]

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).

+1.
I thought our speed of 90 Mbps was fast until I saw 30% of folks with speeds over 100 and a couple over 250.

I assume that the higher speed is needed for gaming but not for other applications as we don't have any buffering problems when streaming movies on any of our devices or when using Wifi calling. When the kids and their significant others were visiting over the holidays they were using all their devices and gadgets with no problems or slowdowns.

 

[mpeirce]

**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]

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]

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"!