Anyone got super ul...
 

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[Closed] Anyone got super ultra mega broadband max?

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Apparently fibre is being installed right now in our street following our community grant scheme thing, and we're told it's the best broadband available which with my current provider (EE) is 300Mbps.

Now tempting as a 100-fold speed increase is just for the hell of it, is it actually worth it? Mostly we'll just be streaming three video streams max, with maybe some downloading. I do occasionally have to download things like VMs and I would use more cloud backup for work if we had the ability. I also have subscribed to Lightroom CC so uploading 8Gb of photos would be a semi regular occurrence.

But all that could be done with 67Mbps I'm sure, not sure if 300 is really necessary. So:

1) does anyone have the top whack broadband, if so why?
2) do you ever get close to those speeds downloading stuff, since I'd guess you'd hit bottlenecks elsewhere
3) what are upload speeds like?


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 5:18 pm
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Not super duper mega fast but I'm on 200Mbps because Virgin offered it as a contract perk.

Normally see about 150Mbps Download and 15Mbps upload.

Download speed seems to depend more on the source site though e.g.just downloaded a 5GB movie from Apple in 15mins, so well below theoretical speed.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 6:19 pm
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44.7mb down, 12.5 up.
200mb Virgin Media cable, wi-fi on speedtest app on this clapped out iPhone 6, at 18:32.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 6:34 pm
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Check out B4RN....2GB in the back end of nowhere!


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 6:46 pm
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So paying for 300Mbps is pointless if the infrastructure is only able to supply 50 ish..


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 6:52 pm
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Depends how many users you have as well - 4 people accessign a 50Mbit site needs a 200Mbit connection.

We have 230Mbit down/20 up and do about 1Tb of data/month between 4 of us.

When we were on 50Mbit is was noticeable when the kids were streaming video or downloading games etc, now I don't notice.

But yes, the source site and infrastructure in between have an impact but this is increasingly less as more people move to the Cloud rather than hostign themselves.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 7:47 pm
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I don't really see the point of it, Netflix etc only needs a few Mb/s so I figure once you're above 20 Mb/s it's diminishing returns. NB If you have a household full of teenagers then maybe...


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 7:54 pm
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If you have a household full of teenagers then maybe…

My son did an update on *one* of his xbox360 games last night - it was a 75Gb download 🙂


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 7:55 pm
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We shared a 100mbit connection between 15 of us in a shared office, I was moving big files around, we had creatives moving stuff and lots of video conf, never dented it.

4k Netflix is 16Mbit
https://www.howtogeek.com/338983/how-much-data-does-netflix-use/

We have 230Mbit down/20 up and do about 1Tb of data/month between 4 of us.

I'd much rather have 100 down/50 Up than that!! The up rate is probably the constraint for gaming and cloud stuff.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 8:01 pm
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44.7mb down, 12.5 up.

We are getting that. We are paying for sky 32mbps, before Christmas we were lucky enough that we were told that we would be upgraded to thier fibre minimum 64, max 128 for free.

Day to day it’s varied from 8mbps to 53mbps but never the new minimum of 64mbps


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 8:02 pm
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In a typical house the bottleneck is often the wifi which could restrict the maximum data rate regardless of how fast the connection to the house is.

Our house of 5 (inc 3 teenage girls) we actually get away with a 10mbps connection without any real issues - we have a holiday house with a 30mbps connection and pretty much seems like overkill!


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 8:16 pm
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1) Yes, 150Mbps at home, 350 at work, upload is 10 at home and 50 in work.

I got it because after 6 years of 4 down I just wanted all the bandwidths!!!

2) No, on a good day, you might get 50Mbps download speeds for data, Speedtest will show 150/350 or whatever but Microsoft is 50 on a VERY good day. Multi users is where it shines - I can stream 4K in the living room whilst the Lad plays Fortnite and Mrs sits in FB and no one complains.

3) upload is above, but it’s rarely an issue.

As a rule, 20Mbps per user is fine for most people, I think it’s about 12 to steam 4K from Netflix etc, it’s more to stream 4K live because they can’t compress so well on-the-fly but that’s a rare thing. You might ‘suffer’ downloading large files, but for most families that means games, if the kids are Steam addicts you’ll be okay.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 8:19 pm
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My son did an update on *one* of his xbox360 games last night – it was a 75Gb download 🙂

I think you might have that wrong.

Xbox360 games would be about 30GB in their entirety, an update is usually 2/3GB

Xbox is confusing sometimes as they show download speeds in MB/s which is different to Mbps


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 8:24 pm
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I'm thinking of downgrading from Virgin 200 to Vodafones 65Mb.

Can get 220 on speedtest if a wired connection or if close to router on wifi, but at distance it slows down.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 9:45 pm
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In a typical house the bottleneck is often the wifi

Our router is 300Mbps or 433Mbps on the 5GHz.

Occasionally, full max speed would be nice, but not all the time. It'd be nice if they could offer you say 30Mbps but you get 3 hours of 300Mbps per month when you need it.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 9:58 pm
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In rural France we only have a 8mb contract . with 3 kids , including 2 boys playing Xbox , it is a nightmare .
Cant wait for the fiber to be fitted , before 2021 apparently .

We had 200mb in the UK with Virgin and it was brilliant , never any issues .


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 10:04 pm
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Diminishing returns over 50Mbps in my experience, but then I don't have teenagers. When I used to wfh (moving big files, cloud, backups, VM's) it was great having fast download (100Mbps) but I really would have liked more upload speed nominally 10Mbps but typically see ~7-8MBps. I'd have taken 50 down 20 up in preference. Now I don't wfh and it's predominantly download traffic. So for your intended usage I'd go for the fastest upload speed you can get with download >50-100Mbps.


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 10:17 pm
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Once your fridge and toaster go online you'll need every one of those gigajizzles - botnets and DDOS don't run on string, you know


 
Posted : 08/01/2019 10:25 pm
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300Mbps comes with 47Mbps upload apparently, but £50/mo won't get budget approval.


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 7:42 am
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You'll only see those WiFi speeds when on top of the router. Rates plummet with distance, especially on 5Ghz.


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 7:54 am
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Yeah I can see that with the 5GHz one, its signal strength drops off through the house, but the 2.4GHz band doesn't. We have a three storey house so we're never more than about 4m from the router itself!


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 8:02 am
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Ours has doubled in speed in the past week. However, this is due to the prolonged settled weather causing the damp in the overhead phone lines to dry out meaning our internet speed has risen from 1 mbs to 2 mbs.

Still with 2 households sharing the same landline, every little helps 🙁

300 Mbs my arse ...... grumble grumble, don't know you're born, grumble


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 8:44 am
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Recency moved to a ufo area purported 900mb. BBC Iplayer no longer struggles at weekends. Upgraded the router to dual band 600 and hardwired the desktop.

Obviously some sites are still faster than others and when downloading and I've noticed it can take time to wind up. You need a big file to hit top speeds but mostly because it is so quick.


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 9:10 am
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I've got Virgin Vivid 200Mbps, and get speeds of 206-210Mbps it's great but it doesn't really "seem" that much faster than the 100Mbps I had previously. Conversely I went around my old dears and she's been upgraded to Vivid 350 and that seems blazing fast, she gets about 364Mbps. Worth it imo.


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 9:15 am
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The cottage we rented in Northumberland last week was getting average 0.25mbps download!


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 9:17 am
 DezB
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I did have the Virgin one. I now haven't. "Dad, get faster broadband! So laggy!"
I'd definitely go back if it was cheaper and Virgin customer service wasn't so shite.


 
Posted : 09/01/2019 9:32 am

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