Upgrading Time Warner Cable Tier. Will speed increase?

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ChaosNightWolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 26, 2003
Messages
306
Hi all,

Currently, I'm on Time Warner Cable's "standard" internet, which provides 10mbs download speed and 1mbs upload.

I'm planning to upgrade from "standard" to either "Extreme" (30mb/5mb) or "Ultimate" (50mb/5mb)

When I upload to YouTube, I don't get 1mbs. I know YouTube doesn't specifically tell you your upload speed, but I can tell I'm not getting 1mb up because it takes forever to upload videos.

If I upgrade my internet, will I achieve faster upload speed if I'm already not getting close to the 1mb upload speed promised?

If any of you have any experience with Time Warner Cable's Wideband internet, please let me know. Thanks.
 
1Mbs does not equal 1 Megabyte Per Second.
You get like 122kb/sec up with a 1Mbs upload, so yes it would take a long time to upload a video to YouTube.

But yes you would get a faster upload, extreme and ultimate will give you about a 600kb/sec upload, so much faster.
 
you wont get 1meg you get like maybe 512kb to 768kb you ever will get the full 1meg I dont know where thedocta45 is getting 122kb from....

but if you will get the wideband you will always get half what the speed shows so say like your speed is like:

30/5 you will get like 29.5/4.5 or 29/4 depends on the node and who is all connected to it.
50/5 you will get like 49.5/4.5 or 49/4.5 or sometimes like 45/4 again depends on the node and how bad its overloaded.

its always upto speeds you never get the true speeds.
 
@timreichhart
If you are promised 1 Mbps up, then you can upload at a max rate of 1000 Kb (or 1 Mbps) / 8 (to convert from bits to bytes) = 125 KB/s.

You are promised Megabits or Kilobits, not MegaBytes or KiloBytes. That is what thedocta45 is explaining.
 
Maybe thedocta45 should have explained it little bit better on his post. Bc what I said is also true so...
 
Okay, I've taken a second look at the offered speeds and it breaks down like this:

Standard = up to 10Mbps download and up to 1Mbps upload

Extreme = up to 30Mbps download and up to 5Mbps upload

Ultimate = up to 50Mbps download and up to 5Mbps upload


I always assumed it worked the way timreichhart described it, but thedocta45 seems too know a little more than us.

Also, is 50Mbps for a single computer with no other devices on the network overkill? Or will I rarely see speeds like that given to me? Does download speed have any effect on upload speed?

I'm a little confused.
 
Yeah sorry my bad, I should have explained that better, this stupid conversion gets me confused sometimes.

Regardless Time Warner's rates are measured in Mbps so upto around 600KB/s will be your upload speed. To put that in perspective you will upload about 36 megabytes of video each minute.
 
timreichhart said:
you wont get 1meg you get like maybe 512kb to 768kb you ever will get the full 1meg I dont know where thedocta45 is getting 122kb from....

but if you will get the wideband you will always get half what the speed shows so say like your speed is like:

30/5 you will get like 29.5/4.5 or 29/4 depends on the node and who is all connected to it.
50/5 you will get like 49.5/4.5 or 49/4.5 or sometimes like 45/4 again depends on the node and how bad its overloaded.

its always upto speeds you never get the true speeds.
Click to expand...

With TWC's 20/2, I'm always meeting advertised speeds or exceeding them sometimes at off-peak hours. YMMV of course. I'm quite happy, and not paying any more than I was for 6/0.5 DSL last month. Note: give the modem room to breathe, critter runs HOT, and it only cools via convection...maybe I should ghetto mod it with a waterblock...

And folks remember your units. Mbps in ISP lingo is megabits per second.
 
Does download speed effect upload speed? I'm tempted to go with their extreme tier, because they offer me the same upload as the ultimate tier, but if going with the ultimate tier my speeds won't slow to a crawl when I'm uploading, i'd choose that.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Also, is 50Mbps for a single computer with no other devices on the network overkill? Or will I rarely see speeds like that given to me? Does download speed have any effect on upload speed?

I'm a little confused.
Click to expand...

a. 50Mbps is quite a bit for a single computer, if your downloading constantly then no.
b. What Timechart is saying is accurate you will most likely never get your full advertised speed. But you will get close most of the time.
c. It does in that as you pay the ISP for more download they will will increase your upload. IE you wouldnt see a 1Mbps Up /10Mbps Down plan from an ISP.

To clarify

Just saw your post no its a separate speed you can Download at 50Mbps/30Mbps and Upload at 5Mbps at the same time with both plans. No need to get the more expensive plan.
 
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thedocta45 said:
a. 50Mbps is quite a bit for a single computer, if your downloading constantly then no.
b. What Timechart is saying is accurate you will most likely never get your full advertised speed. But you will get close most of the time.
c. It does in that as you pay the ISP for more download they will will increase your upload. IE you wouldnt see a 1Mbps Up /10Mbps Down plan from an ISP.

To clarify

Just saw your post no its a separate speed you can Download at 50Mbps/30Mbps and Upload at 5Mbps at the same time with both plans. No need to get the more expensive plan.
Click to expand...


I play a lot of xbox live and PC games. Will the 50Mbps make a difference over the 30Mbps? I'm assuming after a certain point your download doesn't matter. But I'm only guessing.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
Hi all,

Currently, I'm on Time Warner Cable's "standard" internet, which provides 10mbs download speed and 1mbs upload.

I'm planning to upgrade from "standard" to either "Extreme" (30mb/5mb) or "Ultimate" (50mb/5mb)

When I upload to YouTube, I don't get 1mbs. I know YouTube doesn't specifically tell you your upload speed, but I can tell I'm not getting 1mb up because it takes forever to upload videos.

If I upgrade my internet, will I achieve faster upload speed if I'm already not getting close to the 1mb upload speed promised?

If any of you have any experience with Time Warner Cable's Wideband internet, please let me know. Thanks.
Click to expand...

THere are a bunch of freeware network speed monitors you can install.
 
ChaosNightWolf said:
I play a lot of xbox live and PC games. Will the 50Mbps make a difference over the 30Mbps? I'm assuming after a certain point your download doesn't matter. But I'm only guessing.
Click to expand...

Download for gaming doesnt matter past 1mbps to be honest. What matters with bandwidth and gaming is your upload needs to be atleast 1mbps. Remember networking isnt always about download, its important you subscribe to the right upload package as well. Most ISPs suck ass because they dont provided symmetrical bandwidth.
 
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timreichhart said:
Its also about if they do any QoS if they dont then xbox live/pc game will lag out if the node or your network gets over loaded man. That is something else you want to take look at is your QoS on your cable modem/router if you plan on messing around with that.

Look at this type of router:http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/connect/routers/dgl-4500-xtreme-n-gaming-router if you into hardcore gaming man.
Click to expand...

When I play on Xbox Live I have my dual modem/router connected directly to the Xbox and there are no other PC's or devices hooked up using our bandwidth. I'm assuming this eliminates the need to be concerned about QoS.
 
Any sort of QoS applied to your network will be completely dropped at the modem, at which point all traffic goes best effort. No cable company that I know of offers any sort of QoS guarantee for any kind of customer traffic. You can apply QoS to your internal network traffic to prevent things such as LAN traffic from interfering with internet traffic, for example preventing a large file transfer to/from a local file server from maxing out your ethernet connection and causing lag for your game. You can also apply QoS to outbound traffic to ensure things like torrents or uploads to an off site backup location don't use up all the outbound bandwidth and again cause lag. But it can't protect you if everybody else in your neighborhood is torrenting because like I said, once it hits your modem all QoS is gone.

So yes in your case QoS would be 100% useless.
 
tangoseal said:
Download for gaming doesnt matter past 1mbps to be honest. What matters with bandwidth and gaming is your upload needs to be atleast 1mbps. Remember networking isnt always about download, its important you subscribe to the right upload package as well. Most ISPs suck ass because they dont provided symmetrical bandwidth.
Click to expand...

You can't say that...They do offer higher uploads speeds but it will cost you an arm and a few legs. Its just not worth IMO if your just uploading media to youtube, etc.
 
I'm not sure whether TWC can traffic shape outgoing traffic, but you might want to look into is whether TWC is doing traffic shaping on the uploading to YT.

I don't upload at all to YT so I can't speak from experience. However, I know, with a fair bit of certainty, that TWC is shaping the streaming of YT. I can't watch anything 720 without it buffering every minute or two. Even at 480 a fair amount of videos will buffer in the middle. I've verified that it is a YT->TWC->me issue by starting/stopping other forms of traffic (usenet, torrents, speedtest, etc) while trying to run YT videos.

One way you can check is logging into your router and running that in a separate tab/window while monitoring what speeds your router is actually sending out.
 
I'm in LA and moved from 10/1 to 30/5. I typically get ~4MB/s downloads, which is just a bit over the rated speed. There was a definate jump from 10/1 as my speed used to be capped at 1.2MB/s.
 
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