Any geeks not so picky on speeds etc?

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rayonline

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#154096 17-Oct-2014 18:43

I had a lunch chat to some IT guys at work today. One was still on ADSL probably close to the exchange and he says he can stream Youtube HD and Netflix (her daughter) without an issue. The other said that unless you're doing gaming it's not an issue and he pointed out that at work the network switches are 100Mbps. We've got UFB 30Mbps the folks stream foreign language tv shows, been fine, we also have installed Cat6 when we got UFB but honestly we very rarely need to copy a large video file.

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#1157083 17-Oct-2014 18:55

Depends what you are doing I suppose.

I used to have 11Mbps ADSL2+ and could stream stuff no problem and it was quick enough to pull stuff off the seedbox overnight. My problem was I had my big flash NAS and when I left home all my content stayed there.

Now I live in an area with Cable (130/10) and it's awesome!! Now when I'm away I can VPN in to home and watch stuff on the NAS no sweat at all. 1080p is pushing it though and buffer's often. I would jump up to a 20 or 50Mbps upload as soon as it was available.

As for running a Fast Ethernet LAN.... that would drive me insane. Copying a movie to the NAS would take so dam long. I am guessing in this instance they were IT guys for a large firm so upgrading to Gigabit Ethernet wouldn't be trivial.... Cisco gigabit switch gear isn't cheap!!

SirHumphreyAppleby

2851 posts

Uber Geek

#1157094 17-Oct-2014 19:20

Very little content can be downloaded at 30Mbs^-1 internationally based on my current plan speed. The only real use I can see for a 200/200 connection is to exchange data between national sites, but the additional cost isn't worth it for something that would only be used part of the time (for offsite backups etc). The current pricing structure is focused too much on speed as a differentiating factor between plans. I see no reason for it.

I agree with chevrolux, Fast Ethernet would drive me insane.

Yabanize

2350 posts

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#1157095 17-Oct-2014 19:22

chevrolux: Depends what you are doing I suppose.

I used to have 11Mbps ADSL2+ and could stream stuff no problem and it was quick enough to pull stuff off the seedbox overnight. My problem was I had my big flash NAS and when I left home all my content stayed there.

Now I live in an area with Cable (130/10) and it's awesome!! Now when I'm away I can VPN in to home and watch stuff on the NAS no sweat at all. 1080p is pushing it though and buffer's often. I would jump up to a 20 or 50Mbps upload as soon as it was available.

As for running a Fast Ethernet LAN.... that would drive me insane. Copying a movie to the NAS would take so dam long. I am guessing in this instance they were IT guys for a large firm so upgrading to Gigabit Ethernet wouldn't be trivial.... Cisco gigabit switch gear isn't cheap!!

There are other good brands apart from Cisco... Mikrotik has 24 port "Cloud Router Switch" Smart switches for around $200 USD, I know an IT company owner who uses MikroTik gear and he says they're great. They also have smaller versions that are great home routers

kiwikiwi

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1157114 17-Oct-2014 19:47

I would actually be satisfied with 50/50 on UFB. No higher and it doesn't make sense for me. I wouldn't be able to saturate it unless I was doing steam downloads.
I'm currently on ADSL2+ awaiting UFB from Northpower and am on 100/50 with Orcon and at the moment I'm satisfied with the 17/1 I get from ADSL2, twitch streams are acceptable at high quality(not source quality), I can game, I can do light uploads time to time, download speeds are suffice, the overall connection is enough for 3 households but I'd want to expand to 50/50 on UFB. If they offered that I'd take it in an instant.

You can also follow me on twitter here @kiwifortw I do twitch streams every now and then at twitch.tv/kiwiforthewin :)

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gzt

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#1157200 17-Oct-2014 22:47

Imho reliability is better than speed, but you tend to get increased reliability as a byproduct of the infrastructure for increased speed anyway.

xpd

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#1157343 18-Oct-2014 10:03

I download and stream a reasonable amount so yup, speed/bandwidth is of concern to me.

Gaming wise, speed isnt the issue really, its the latency. Long as I had at least a 5mpbs connection Id still game quite happily.

I'll also be running a private Unturned server soon, so upload bandwidth is a need.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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DarthKermit

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#1157347 18-Oct-2014 10:17

I've had UFB available in my street for nearly two years. I haven't any need to migrate away from ADSL.

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raytaylor

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#1159603 21-Oct-2014 20:54

I am finding its a competition issue
We have heaps of lifestyle block owners who are expecting to get 30mbits fibre speed on a rural microwave radio connection and think anything below 10mbits is "dialup"
But when you look at the usage pattern of these subscribers accounts, they barely ever hit more than 2mbits.
So right now we are trying to get 20mbits up and down everywhere across the network as standard now.

2.5mbits is the point of attrition where a surfer wont notice a speed difference if it ever gets higher. Its only when they are downloading that they notice it - and that movie download is the difference between 2 minutes and 5 minutes - seriously its not a big deal.

So personally i am happy with 2.5mbits - its more enough for 720p high resolution youtube.
But gamers and urban people who are now more rural than they think, believe they need more.

Ray Taylor

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Batman

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#1159633 21-Oct-2014 21:23

Depends

If the goal of your life is to buy a Toyota corolla then speed is not an issue. If you dream of driving a v8 and want the latest iphone then yes, I want a 200/200 connection if I can afford it.

PhantomNVD

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#1159656 21-Oct-2014 22:14

I'm happily looking forward to UPgrading to 17mb VDSL when I finally sell my house, but (as others have mentioned) the only time I find my work fibre connection to be more beneficial than that is when I have big updates/iTunes movies/etc. to pull down, where at home I need to overnight them, and at work they blaze down in 5-10 minutes (4gb HD movie from iTunes).

TwoSeven

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#1160200 22-Oct-2014 17:59

chevrolux: Depends what you are doing I suppose.

...
Now I live in an area with Cable (130/10) and it's awesome!! Now when I'm away I can VPN in to home and watch stuff on the NAS no sweat at all.

I would be surprised if your VPN speed was over 10Mbs.

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Coil

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#1160202 22-Oct-2014 18:01

TwoSeven:
chevrolux: Depends what you are doing I suppose.

...
Now I live in an area with Cable (130/10) and it's awesome!! Now when I'm away I can VPN in to home and watch stuff on the NAS no sweat at all.

I would be surprised if your VPN speed was over 10Mbs.

Astril VPN, I get my max line speed to USA and Europe. 62Mb/s

TwoSeven

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#1160204 22-Oct-2014 18:05

rayonline: I had a lunch chat to some IT guys at work today. One was still on ADSL probably close to the exchange and he says he can stream Youtube HD and Netflix (her daughter) without an issue. The other said that unless you're doing gaming it's not an issue and he pointed out that at work the network switches are 100Mbps. We've got UFB 30Mbps the folks stream foreign language tv shows, been fine, we also have installed Cat6 when we got UFB but honestly we very rarely need to copy a large video file.

It seems to me an old case of not having access to a technology so not having the experience of what it could be potentially used for. Throw multiple HD IP TVs into the mix, HD Video calling, multiple movie streams and the like and then multiply it by a few users in the home doing their own thing and it paints a different picture.

Basically its the same argument when 56K dialup was around and broadband was starting to take off.

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hio77

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#1160209 22-Oct-2014 18:13

Having moved from my 50/10 VDSL back to 2/0.7 i find even simple tasks a bit of a struggle now.

You get used to expecting that quality, expecting that speed!

i had no problems at all maxing my connection to US or NL over single threads. I dont accept that things have to be slow because they are far away assuming you have control of both endpoints you do have the potential to tune it up. - this is where my pickyness with an isp comes in, you do notice the difference between isps, There is a bit of a difference between bandwidth providers.

I personally am struggling to adjust to the new speeds, looking into solutions to improve things.. looking at average usage, i dont use much. but when i do i expect my bits to be there as fast as possible, uncongested.

between the 10~20mbit mark i could settle fine, but certainly would prefer the higher burstable speeds!..

at 2.4/0.7 (current sync speeds) web-browsing is noticeably slower than what i used to go at, so i absolutely disagree with comments made above that 2.5mbit is all you need. take into account that being shared out among multiple users and it becomes painful.

to be fair, over wireless i would not expect perfect performance however..

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SirHumphreyAppleby

2851 posts

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#1160212 22-Oct-2014 18:17

TwoSeven:
rayonline: I had a lunch chat to some IT guys at work today. One was still on ADSL probably close to the exchange and he says he can stream Youtube HD and Netflix (her daughter) without an issue. The other said that unless you're doing gaming it's not an issue and he pointed out that at work the network switches are 100Mbps. We've got UFB 30Mbps the folks stream foreign language tv shows, been fine, we also have installed Cat6 when we got UFB but honestly we very rarely need to copy a large video file.

It seems to me an old case of not having access to a technology so not having the experience of what it could be potentially used for. Throw multiple HD IP TVs into the mix, HD Video calling, multiple movie streams and the like and then multiply it by a few users in the home doing their own thing and it paints a different picture.

My Internet usage has changed significantly over the years. While waiting for my 200/200 (whcih will probably become 200/20), I've been thinking about how only a few years ago, I would have preferred a high quality 2Mb connection versus 8Mb-plus ADSL. For years I had wireless because of reliability, until the cost difference became too great. I used to thrash the connection on the last day of the month, because rate limiting was applied over night... even then we never went over 80GB (40GB quota). These days we routinely exceed 100GB on fibre, with the highest month at around 500GB. The move to 200/20(0) is motivated by a desire to do off-site backups. E-mail backups alone will total over 40GB per month, although these could be more efficient.

I couldn't go back to 2Mb again now.

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