Minimum broadband speed you could live with?

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Valnar

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 3, 2001
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This should be an interesting experiment.

Unlike the posts that show how awesome some people's speeds are at home, while making the rest of us jealous, what is the minimum speed you could live with at home and be okay?

I currently have Cox with 60/5, but could live with 20/5 if I had to. 20m covers any download, Netflix or other streaming needs I have while providing enough headroom for upstream provider issues. I couldn't live with less than 5mb upload though. That barely cuts it for my voip or remote Plex needs.

Now before people ask me why I would ask such a silly question? It's all hypothetical. If you need a pretend reason, imagine you could buy your dream house somewhere but they had crappy broadband service. How low could you go before you said f*ck it, I'm not moving.
 
I currently have the highest speeds i can get (until fiber eventually makes it to my area) I'm at 25/2.5

I would be OK if i went to the next one down at 10/0.8 but i wouldn't be happy.
 
I'm VERY satisfied with our 50/10 service and price. I remember having the package under this one and having issues at times. We run 2 gaming desktops, 1 file server (mainly used for plex), 1 smart TV, 2 laptops for light browsing and our cell phones. At times, with guests over, we'll have everything running at the same time with no issues.
 
ADSL 20/2 fiber is like 30m away but they don't have any plans for getting it to my house :(
 
Interesting, 15/7 with "acceptable" ping (no crazy 400+ms pings) would be the minimum for me. Rough, but usable.
 
I could probably live with 10/1.

Comcast recently upgraded their speed tiers locally, so I just downgraded my Comcast service from Blast to the standard Performance tier. I save $12/month and have the same speed I had before.
 
I had 5/1 for the longest time till fibre came around a year or two ago which bumped me to 50/30.

To me the biggest factor is not the speed but the caps. I rather have an unlimited slower connection than a capped fast one. Thankfully we don't have caps here though.

I could live with like a 10/10 connection if I had to, it would be faster than DSL and still good upload. Heck I could probably manage with a 1/1 if I really had to. It would suck, but I'd find ways to manage. Prestream/download youtube videos, set QoS on my offsite backups so it does not kill my connection, etc...

I don't do any cloud stuff, so as far as every day computing I'm using my local servers, even watching movies etc is all local.
 
Some good points... I suppose I could go down to 15/3 if I had to, without affecting my current lifestyle too much, but less would be a compromise. I work from home too, so that 3 is very important. :D
 
I'm on a 100/4 right now, and it's awesome when I can max it out, 12 MB/sec downloads are oh so sweet. But regardless of that I'm pretty old fashioned, I like old computers, and I'm sure I could get by with a much weaker connection. I was around during the dialup era (28.8kbps) so I know what slow feels like. I could work with just about any broadband connection probably.
 
I have 75/8 now on uverse. I grew up on 28.8k, 33.6k, 56k, 56k v.90, 56k v.92 and my first high speed connection was 6/1 on cable. After moving out I went to 3m/512k dsl and was happy for a long time. As WiFi (802.11b) started to emerge I started adding more devices and went from one user to 2. At that point I upgraded to 6/768k dsl and was happy. About a year after that the local cable company got sold and internet prices dropped. At that point I upgraded to 15/2 cable leaving dsl. That was good for a few years, then I got interested in running servers. I moved to a 30/3 connection. At that point I moved outside the cable company footprint and I went to 18/1.5 VDSL for a month then 24/3 VDSL, then 45/5, then I got Comcast 50/4 and kept the VDSL also load balancing the two. When Comcast rolled extreme 105 I upgraded and got rid of the VDSL. Then a deal came by for 75/8 and I grabbed it and left Comcast.

What could I live with? Looking at my average traffic graphs on my IDS, 20mbps would be fine for downloads but uploads are where services fall short, I need 5mbps for backup and streaming while on the road, minimum.

I'm seriously considering renting a 300/300 fiber connection and building a hardened communications shed, heated/cooled, full redundancy, whole 9 yards. I could host some servers and provide backup for a few clients and come out close to even. My location and property could be considered desirable for a small, discreet, secure Colo facility. I have 4 providers fiber passing through my property, all 4 of which enter cable vaults on my property. I have 3ph power available at the corner, I would just have to pay the build out to my property (400ft).

It could be an interesting little business.
 
Minimum that can stream 4K h.265 and vp9 media so 20Mb down to be safe and at least 1Mb up.
 
I could do 5/1 or even 3/1 just fine. Data caps are more important to me than raw speeds. 1 Mbit 24/7 = approx 260 GB in a 30 day month. My average usage is 400-500 GB.
 
I've BEEN living with a 6/512 connection that's really a 5/512 connection.

I can't stand it anymore. I'm moving at the end of the month, and I'm already set up for a 75/15 connection from *PTUI!* Comcast. I know the people who own the place I'm moving into. They've had the 75/15 there for a couple years now. It's been nice and stable and best effort is usually about 70-72/12-14
 
wizdum said:
15/2 if living alone.
Click to expand...

Yea for my fios I think the base now is 15/15 but it was 15/5. I'd be fine on that as I live alone. I have the 50/50 plan now. Really I think above 10 down with at least 2 up would be fine for most. In my case I'd say the lag would be more important(the lack of it).
 
Running on 20/20 Fiber through our Co-op power company, its about the minimum I can stand really.
 
I pay for 4/1 and generally get 10-20. I live rural and am on a WISP.
 
I'm kinda surprised at how low everyone's numbers are. I pretty much can't stand anything below 100Mbps symmetric. Ideally I'd have at least 500Mbps symmetric.
 
CamaroZ28 said:
I'm kinda surprised at how low everyone's numbers are. I pretty much can't stand anything below 100Mbps symmetric. Ideally I'd have at least 500Mbps symmetric.
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I'm sure if you were forced to, you'd be OK with 25.
 
I'd have to say ~45Mb (enough to stream 4k, with low priority other stuff occurring) down, and then at least 8Mb up. I need something resembling speed for uploading video stuff, occasionally.
 
Minimum would probably be 10Mbps down. Currently my service is a 20Mb connection and I'm pretty happy with it for the most part. More bandwidth would be nice, but I rarely run into a situation where I really need more. Upload on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired. I'd love to have a 10Mb+ upload
 
by definition, broadband is 25/3.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps

i am on comcast 105/10, but as long as i had the 25/3 i think i could live (as long as pings are low). would i want to? hell no! for just your standard surfing, 25/3 would be fine. its game/torrent/movies downloads where you are really going to notice that 25/3 connection. going from downloading things at 12MB/s to 2MB/s, painful.
 
My parents are on 1.5/512.. something more than that :eek:
It's interesting at Christmas time when my brother and his family are back for a week.

I finally got a new modem yesterday to take advantage of Cox's doubled speeds 25/? > 50/5. I haven't seen more than 31, but there's been issues the last couple days anyway so I'll give it a couple more before I worry about dealing with them.

We were on their lower tier but I was a sucker for their promo pricing on upgrading. Once you get used to it, you don't want to go back, even if you could. :eek: It's not really worth saving $5-6 to get 1/5 the speeds.
 
I've got 50/5 right now and could handle less download.. but the upload is the kicker. Give me 25/25 and I'd be a happy camper. I use the upload a lot for traveling to access my Plex library, and backing up my file server to Crashplan (about 3TB of data synced).
 
CamaroZ28 said:
I'm kinda surprised at how low everyone's numbers are. I pretty much can't stand anything below 100Mbps symmetric. Ideally I'd have at least 500Mbps symmetric.
Click to expand...

I am sure 80% of your tasks do not saturate that link.
 
I'd be able to live with 3m/256k without sacrificing too much. I wouldn't be happy but I could get by...

That said I'd switch from 50/5 to 25/25 in a heartbeat, I'd love to be able to use something like backblaze.
 
25/5 is about the minimum I will tolerate anymore. Would like a faster upload speed though for when we offload the RAW pictures from our cameras so the cloud backup wouldn't take days.

Lower than that and it just sucks. I hate waiting for stuff to download.

And no data caps are a requirement as well.
 
I got by with 8/1 (being generous) when out in Oklahoma for a few years, and I could certainly do it again. Not saying I'd be happy about it, but I could do it.

.... it also looks like there might be 100/100 fiber service available in my area in OR soon, so.... can always hope...
 
I went from 15/1 up to 30/5 and don't really notice a difference in downloads. The upload it noticeable though, I will try to stay above 5 up.
 
I'd be fine with 10/1 if I HAD to. Right now I have 25/2 DSL. My ISP is currently running fiber so in a few months that'll be 50/20 (They go up to 250/50). The upload is what I need more of.
 
having been spoiled by gigabit fiber, i can't live with any less than my 1000/1000 at this point. i get ~900mbit to most of my servers. were i in a different line of work, probably wouldn't matter so much.
 
You all suck. I have 4/1. Actually today I "upgraded" to 7/1. That's the fastest I can get.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I pay for 4/1 and generally get 10-20. I live rural and am on a WISP.
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How's the latency?


Anyhow, I think I could live on DSL again. Netflix would be out of the question though. I lived on 3mbps DSL for a few years (high school till my first house). Once I bought the house Time Warner was my only option. I must say, I'm spoiled on my 30/5 connection.

If (when i suppose) I move. Internet will definitely be a consideration for location but, I'm not gonna favor a faster connection over a better piece of property so long as DSL is available.
 
Private_Ops said:
How's the latency?
Click to expand...

30's-60's typical. They are in the process of revamping the network so we hang out and wait. I am told that speeds up 100mbps and latency in the 20's are around the corner.
 
CamaroZ28 said:
I'm kinda surprised at how low everyone's numbers are. I pretty much can't stand anything below 100Mbps symmetric. Ideally I'd have at least 500Mbps symmetric.
Click to expand...

There's living with, and wanting to live with. Everyone would love a 100mbps connection, but that's not realistic available in a lot of places or is very expensive. My fibre ISP can go up to 250/30 but really 50/30 is more than enough and I'm very happy with that. Of course more is always better. :D

Though, it is 2015, internet speeds should not even be a discussion by now, the internet should basically be a giant LAN with everything connecting at 100m or gig up/down with multiple 10g+ links to aggregate between towns. It's crazy that most places don't even have fibre to the home, or have ridiculous caps.
 
A stable 25/25 would be nice.

But right now I'm dealing with 4 down and 10 up during peak hours in instead of 100/10.
 
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