I love my gig speed, I have had fiber with AT&T now for 4 years in OKC and I would not want anything else. I work from home, for a for a huge technology company. It makes sense for virtual meetings, transfer of files, not to mention, when the husband is off work, the daughter is home from school and everything is running on the network. I can look at my network pull and yeah I may be fulling at any giving time 37-150GB an hour but really its about just knowing you have the power and the speed. I pay $89 a month and have for the last 4 years because I TV, and wireless. You just can't beat that cost, and it is more reliable than that of the only other real GIG competitor in our market Cox, which isn't Fiber, and is double. I would never go back because the day I did, would be the day I finally got that one RU-vid video that made me famous, and I won't get my locked in grandfathered $89 GIG price again.
As a general rule of thumb you want to get a internet speed that allows for every member of a household to have at minimum access to 25mbps. This will allow everyone to do as they please. 2x that amount per person if you live in a house that is all about streaming and where each user is using multiple devices at a time i.e a 4k Netflix stream while browsing their phone or gaming while downloading large files in the background. Anything more than that and its just convenience but not necessary for a good experience. Their are obviously outlier scenarios but as a general rule of thumb that is the easiest way to figure out the kind of internet speed one should get for themselves and their family
Same here. I had Frontier DSL and was running about 6 download, and 2 upload. For general web browsing, that seemed okay. But a local fiber company offered 500 download and 500 upload for a cheaper price. (500 download and upload for 50 dollars, total, 75 dollars for 1 gig. Far cheaper than Frontier which doesn't offer fiber in my area. The fiber company is a no contract and cancel anytime plan, with no limits. I don't subscribe to any streaming service except Prime.
My problem is I have really good speeds 1 gig download and 50 upload but I randomly get packet loss sometimes and also every so often my internet will just go offline while playing what is the issue
Please note that for the most home smart devices you have mentioned like security cameras and lights, they don't necessarily use the internet (Except for sending metric data to manufacturer's server or download software updates). When you access security camera footage via NVR or the camera itself while staying at home, the bandwidth consumption is being done within the LAN network, meaning the camera video footage data gets delivered from the camera/NVR to your smartphone or computer via your router. So here the quality of the router matters more than your internet bandwidth. The exception is if somehow the camera uploads the footage to a remote cloud server and your phone downloads it from that server, in that case internet bandwidth is consumed. This applies for most of the smart devices we use in our home.
I Love My AT&T 1000 Mbps! Not Everybody needs 1000 Mbps But I Will Always Enjoy Having Fiber. Some People Drive Hondas And Some People Drive BMWs, They Both Will Get You From Point A to Point B But I Prefer To Drive In Comfort.
Fiber is not just about the download speeds it's also about the upload something that most people are finding out that they need. Funny how you bring up Honda vs BMW yet BMW used a turbocharged 4 cyl engine like Honda
One thing I really haven’t heard discussed much is reliability. Since so many, including myself are working from home even small little outages from cable can really throw a wrench in your workflow. Yes there is sharing that you mentioned but signal frequencies fluctuations can cause cable to become unstable. Something I am currently experiencing. Cox is installing Fiber in my area (phoenix) right now... My primary hope is that I get an upgrade in reliability. You have windows to work these days when you are also trying to deal with home schooling and keeping the kids fed and entertained. Connection issues in those windows suuuuucccckkk
That is one of the bigger reasons I switched the second FTTH became available in my neighborhood. The difference for reliability is like night and day. Cable sucks. I had more outages on cable in 1 month than in 3 years with FTTH.
I've had Spectrum cable internet for 3 years and it has been very reliable. If any outages ever happen Spectrum gets on it quickly. Now I am not too sure a phone company that provides fiber internet is going to respond that fast. I have read many fiber customer reviews about having reliability issues, internet going up and down frequently.
For me: upgrading to fiber will hopefully resolve many issues I have with my upstream when live streaming with cloud service overlays while in VOIP and gaming simultaneously, but the hardest hit area is my VPN and running multiple remote desktop sessions. I currently have 1000down/50up cable connection and doing speed tests depending on time of day it can be as fast as 920down or as slow as 500down. The speed fluctuates a lot depending on time of day. My upload get effected as well. I frequently have remote desktop sessions hang or drop out and have to reconnect which really hinders workflow. I also play an alpha game that gets frequent large download updates to it so having the 10+gig dl finish quickly saves time and gives me time to check out the latest patch. And in todays world: multiple work from home + multiple remote learning on the same connection is becoming the new normal and far more common these days. On the gaming side: granted the speeds are not as important while playing, however the ping is. High ping on a PvP game can mean the difference between getting the kill and getting killed. Fiber is going to be superior to other broadband forms but that doesn't mean you need the fastest connection fiber has to offer. most fiber providers will offer 50, 100, 250, 500, and gig symmetrical connections.
@@jasonvoorhees4590 yea att loves ripping people off when there is no competition. im paying $70 for 18mbps and only get 15 and .8 to .9 up. thankfully our power company started running fiber and we will have 500mbps up and down for the same price in a few weeks.
In my neighborhood in SW Florida, Frontier is offering gig fiber for $69.99 which is over 3 times as fast and half the price as my current service through xfinity. I’m switching . Mostly it’s because after the recent hurricane, internet was out for over 2 weeks because the cables weren’t underground
Another big thing to keep in mind, especially with gaming, is that bandwidth for downloading. A 100mbps connection trying to download say a 8 gig game, or even something monstrous like COD with its 15+ gig file size can take hours. Especially on digital only consoles where space is a commodity. This is where that higher speed is incredible
200/200 is a pretty good spot to be at if you have fiber. If you have to rely on cable than getting the faster speed from them is a must for the higher upload speeds as it asymmetrical so for the example of Comcast 300/10 is a good reasonable spot to be at
Smart home devices wouldn't use any Internet bandwidth if you are only controlling and monitoring them within your own WiFi network. If you need to access them away from home, however, you would be using upload bandwidth. On a different note, a great reason to have increased upload speed is if you have a media server like Plex that has content you want to view away from home. With only 5 or 10 Mbps upload, you can pretty much only watch the content in 720p. This is a reason I would go to fiber, but it's not yet available in my area. :(
My Xfinity/Comcast works pretty good with 200-300mbps down and 10 up. Not a content creator yet, so our experience is pretty good so far. Even with working from home.
Yep, that's been the same with me. Like I told the Xfinity rep when I canceled, there was nothing wrong with the service, I was happy with it. But I couldn't say no to upgrading my upload speed.
Yup. It was 20 today, but ATT doesn't offer fiber here even though I'm in a big city and my current ISP would destroy my budget. It does what I need for now but I'm always watching out for more.
We upgraded to 1GB Fiber and have more TV buffering than we did with 50mb coax. And it is costing twice the price. It seems to be much less forgiving with getting through the whole house than the wifi on coax was. There are typically only about 6 devices (printer, tv, computers, cell phones and tablets) online at the same time. And even though some are connected they may not be doing anything. There are no smart-home devices (doorbells, light bulbs, cameras, etc). I work from home and see a lot of internet not available periods of time. We are moving back to coax - possibly with a Private Direct Connection if available.
You need to remember, if your internet goes down, fiber or coax, how long is it going to take the company to get someone out to fix it. Some companies may take a day or two to get a tech out while some companies get on the problem right away. I have Spectrum cable internet and it is extremely reliable, if ever it goes down they dispatch right away so I'm very satisfied with 370 mbps which is plenty fast.
If fiber wasn’t cheaper in my area than cable I wouldn’t have bought into it. I pay $110 for 250d and I forget the up with Comcast. Fiber on my area is going for $70 for a gig up and down.
Appreciate the focus on how much speed is really needed. Easy to get caught up with the fastest internet but are you going to make the most of it unless cost isn’t a factor
I have 25mb speed and it’s perfectly fine for me I don’t upload anything and I live alone so I’m the only one using the internet. Games take a bit to download but I just let them download when I’m sleeping and it’s good to go when I wake up.
We have 2 Xboxes, a Play Station, 3 Nintendo Switches, 3 Tablets, 5 TVs, 2 PC's 3 Amazon Streaming Devices and 5 People live in the house 2 Adults 3 Children. WIth "Comcast" (Brand under a dif name here in Oregon) and it Sucks even though it's supposed to be 1 gigabit. I wish there was a 1gigabit fiber option here.
What it was for me is the cable service so runs me has data caps. With 3 phones two tablets a ps5, Xbox x and other smart devices the fiber company offers a lifetime price lock and no data caps so I’m paying way less than what cable was charging me for a god
If you are a research Scientist who needs to download data from their cloud server and then analyze the data at home and upload their data back to the cloud. From my experience some of these data files can be rather large and require large upload speed.
The title Is Fiber Better Than Cable is a little misleading as to the true topic of the conversation. Its really about whether or not people need that much more upload speed. I would like to have expanded on how you get the synchronous speeds and whether or not converting to a fiber connection allows this and what are some of the other added benefits such as latency, jitter....etc.
fiber for me isn't so much about bandwidth usage, it's about low latency. that is what you want for gaming. 4k movies, since we are a more connected world then ever, and also for a family. i was on a 50 mbp package, and the lag was horrible, for 2 adults and 2 children, went to the 1 gig and no problems at all.
I would think reliability is another huge factor for gamers. Fiber is way more reliable. You are way more likely to see a cable connection suddenly crash for no reason.
Hi there; What about video conferencing / Zoom Meetings? I am with Shaw / Blue Curve and have 20 GB upload and around 600 download. We are still have some issues, Zoom says unstable signal. What do you think? Thanks!
My 2 cents: My main computer and main Roku TV both hard wired to modem. I watch lots of hd and uhd youtube, and subscribe off and on to all the major streaming services, i.e. HBO/Netflix/Hulu, etc. In past two years my cable internet service has gone from 40 mbps to 200 mbps. I have not noticed ANY improvement in buffering on hard wired tv or laptop or web surfing. My opinion is that all anyone needs (for a single connected device) is about 25 mbps to enjoy 4k content.
Great question. Yeah, it would be about the same, since it's about the amount of data you're streaming. So 1080p video will use the same amount of speed whether the picture is live or on demand. The difference is that most of your live TV streaming is, iirc, still not in 4K. It's been a few months since I looked into that, though, to be honest...
I think eventually, the live tv services will get around to adding 4K live streaming. Just not there yet though. They probably would have to charge more to make up for the costs of maintaining that ability like Netflix charging an extra $3 but it wouldn't be much more than $5 more I'm guessing. Right now, Hulu, RU-vid TV, and Sling would be better off continuing to build up their customer base and then ask for more money if people want 4K live stream capability.
Bandwidth is not equal to speed. Yes, fiber will be faster (!!!), but this isn't a purely bandwidth issue. TCP traffic is generally more affected by latency. UDP is another story.
Thanks for explain. I do not have all of these smart devices, but two boys who use gaming consoles and each of us with the laptops consuming streaming and browsing. Got and offer where Fiber Gigabyte Internet will be cheaper then my current cable Gigabyte. The tricky descicion is to take the Fiber or negotiate with the Cable to get even better promo.
@@michaelferolito2731 Thank you for reply. Now, 2 years later...... I have 1.5 Gigabyte Fiber. All seems to be good, fast, etc. Does it better than Cable? I do not know. On the router level it shows great speeds (as promised), but the laptop located right next to router and connected with WiFi shows only 0.4 GB download speed.
I'm upgrading next week rn I have 500 down and 20 up fiber was put in my neighborhood last week and it's like 20 dollars cheaper for double the speed even if I need it or don't its cheaper than the cable I'm paying for now
You're forgetting that most gamers also download games, and a lot of modern games are off 100gb, fiber also usually has lower latency, which is important for a lot of multiplayer games.
Yeah I have a 50 tb server and when I originally backed it up to my cloud provider I had a 1gb fiber cloud service. Now when I need to recover 5TB's of data I now have 100mb service and the sad thing is it's not available on my street they have it literally right up my street. I might have to get Spectrums 900mb service but will have to keep the 100mb service through ATAT due to how in my experience how unreliable they are since I also work from home.
ik its late but i have 5g getting blasting fast 1gb and about 120 upload is that good with the uploads? the reason why i am asking is due to how the online world is getting more needed for faster speeds.
I'm not sure but I guess things are a little different from one area to another and so when you live in an apartment complex because I used to have a 150 mbps cable connection contract for a downtown apartment and the real speed was terrible, always buffering... So I upgraded to gigabit and of course it's better but not impressive. Maybe the cables in the building are too old and need to be replaced (it's an old building) but I think it's more than that because I have to reset the modem on a regular basis to keep an acceptable average speed
In my area the fastest internet i got is 6mbps and i do alot of 1080 p streaming with little to no buffering but i live on my own but i have test my bandwidth buy streaming 1080 p on my roku laptop and cell phone at the same time and i saw very little buffering on all three devices and let the videos run for 30 minutes the only time it buffered was when i tryed 1440 p but 1080p good enough for me
I have 1.5gbps down 1gbps up and I actually get a bit more than that because my ISP has my profile set to 1.6gbps down, 1.1gbps up just to ensure I get those speeds provided I have the proper network hardware(which I do XD). Do you need anything approaching gigabit internet ? Hell no, most services won't even let you upload and download at 1/5th of those speeds. I think RU-vid limits you to something like half a gigabit when uploading videos(probably less), Twitch limits you to less than 100mbps streaming to their service AFAIK. You would have to be crazy paranoid to have enough security cameras to even approach a 200mbps symmetrical fiber line. You would need to have and find a very niche usage for gigabit internet and I highly doubt the average consumer comes anywhere close to needing anything beyond 200mbps. Speaking for myself, I think my house hold could easily fit within a 150mbps symmetrical fiber line, maybe even less despite being a stream and download heavy household.(I'm already at half a terabyte used in 6 days download for the household, granted, some of that is just us screwing with the fiber line because I just got it recently lol) That being said, I won't downgrade because I like having the extra download speeds for when I do have large games to download.
Also, if the server you're using can't handle any more speed it doesn't matter. I get like 300 down but if I'm installing a game on Xbox say, it's only ever running MAX 100. I work remotely and my company's server speed is down right atrocious. If I drag 70 megs worth of data to my shared drive it usually runs between 100 and 300 k. K. Like....56k modem numbers usually. So what good is a gig of upload speed available? Having said that....we have fiber here and I will probably switch anyway 😁
In las vegas I had cable internet by cox for 500mbps and up for 100$ and was going up yearly and with contract, when the contract ended the price was going to 120$ so I switched to centurylink no contract for 67$ 140mbps no data cap and was surprised to know it was DSL internet 🤣 amazing how such old technology isn’t that far off from cable,granted maybe it’s due to my location and other logistics but I’ve heard people complain all over usa and the world about how bad dsl internet is, sometimes comparable to dial up lmao 🤣 I guess I’m just lucky
would a family of 4 count in this category of needing fiber, cuase my perents and sister are on the tvs all the time in our house, I'm sitting here gaming or either watching something on youtube and 5 mins- 1 hour later connection drops and takes 6-15 minutes for it to fully come back on, we use xfinity comcast and we bought our own modem and there butthurt about us using this thing. so they just for some reson drop our connection we are currently using cable aswell.
Internet Speed is really about Time Savings. If your uploading a bunch of data, for backups lets say, this can be done at night and there is no rush. The Internet vs Video watching has pretty much sorted itself out. Whatever your speeds your video will adjust. Also, there were a few examples you listed that were actually "internal" networking, not using your external connection. If you have a family of 6 and they all watch Netflix at 4k... then maybe its a good idea. Does everyone (or anyone) REALLY need to see a movie at 4k? Hats a different comment. If you are thinking of what to get...figure 5 GB download and 1 GB upload for each member of your family and adjust accordingly and you should be fine.
Cable is the coaxial line it’s shared with the entire block of houses so when everyone’s trying to get online the speed drops. DSL is a direct connection to your home and only your home your the only one on the line so you don’t lose speed
Just recently got 2.5gig but my freind does the fiber work so had him turn it up at the pole have no clue what I'm gonna do with the speed but my tests speeds over direct cat7 lines to my laptop over 2500 to 2900 mbps only have 126 devices in my house tvs computers lots of alexa pucks pucks 13 4k cams security across my acres of land and iv never been over a gig on normal usage I did however send some files to a friend that where over 100 gig but thank thats about the only time iv ever truely worked it I will say my kids are always streaming disney Netflix Hulu disney plus still doesn't dent it The power of muti-mode fiber is crazy I use to use 4glte but payed 4 grand to have fiber ran to the house shure beats my old 26mbps 4glte
i currently have spectrums 2302 235 megabit plan and 10 up and i ts for light streaming but with me now recording my videos for my friends to enjoy and only having 10 megabites up ii practicly have to leave my comptuer on over night when i wannna turn it off to get it done and uploaded because it takes so long and i have a a gaming laptop so its not enough for me so my landlords upgrading me to the 70$ 400 megabit plan
AT&T dug right under the grassy area between the sidewalk and the street, all the way down the blocks (yes, you read it correct, the whole neighborhood). Fiber optics. I contacted their technician and was told they have to bore from the fiber optic line to the house, under the sidewalk in order to connect the homes. That is done when the customer signs up. The more people sign up (theoretically) the more affordable it should be to everyone.
I agree to an extent, I posted this already but I have a general rule of thumb that when buying internet the minimum requirement for the household is that 25mbps can be allocated per person. I have found with that amount of speed everyone can do what they need to do uninterrupted. 2x that is for just a overall better experience as a whole and anything more is convenience for those moments where someone like myself wants to download large files. Like, say MW which was a 140Gb file on Blizzard.net. Unfortunately with cable providers if you want a reasonable upload speed you got to opt for Gig. With Comcast it is 1000/35up which is the reason I personally subscribe to the speed. In the past, when I was in college me and my 4 other roommates were able to get away with 400/400 from Fios quite comfortably. We went with that tier because the next step down was only 200mbps which just wasn't enough since most of the time people would be over who also used the bandwidth. So there could be as many as 20+ devices being used at any given time which lead to some serious slowdowns. Just between us at roommates their was more than 40 devices connected(not all being used at once of course). I am sure that that would have been a case for Gig internet being good as well but we were broke college kids
Maybe, but one of the advantages of fiber is reliability. Around here, AT&T'S VDSL network is pretty old and has somewhat frequent outages. Same with Comcast, and, when I had Comcast, speeds were never as promised. Fiber, however, is rock solid.
RU-vid won't let you upload at the full 1gbps speeds. You'd be hard pressed to find any service that will serve you content at greater than a couple hundred mbps
