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Comments on news posted 2007-06-06 18:47:48: TopTechNews takes a look at current bandwidth speeds and wonders exactly how much bandwidth consumers need. ..
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grobinette
Premium,Mod
join:2001-01-27
Springfield, VA
clubs:
 ·Verizon FIOS
Host:
Home Repair & Impr..
Millenicom
| They did say the "average" consumer I don't consider most of the people here in that average range. More like the high use extreme.
But for the millions of people who just want to surf the net, get some information, send or receive an email with a couple of pictures 6Mbps would probably do the trick.
As for me, the more bandwidth the merrier.
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Team Discovery | |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA | Re: They did say the "average" consumer Unless you're trying to host your own game most current broadband connections are sufficien for online play. Games require low latency, not lots of bandwidth.
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Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams. | |
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Jwobot
join:2002-08-14
Sterling Heights, MI
 ·WOW Internet and C..
| Fast or Slow? I have 4megs down with two computers. My dad only notices it being slow when I am watching on line tv. The connection is not slow when I play on line video games for more than 3 hours or download big patches for my games on bit-torrent as well some linux iso's.
Not sure what plan my uncle has, it's either 4 megs or 6megs down but he uses two computers for his on line gaming plus has another machine for his kids to play video games and his connection is not slow. I forgot to mention they are power users for on line gaming. | |
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jamez818
please hold during the silence
join:2000-09-18
Sunland, CA | 10 dwn 5 up for me please! I would be happy with 10/5 connection for the next 4-5 years. After that I would want to double it.
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just whiners and complainers... | |
| kd6cae
P2p Shouldn't Be A Crime
join:2001-08-27
Lancaster, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·DSL EXTREME
| more upload, please? I think what North American internet providers need to realize is that there are users that would like to send data at something better than a snails pace! The internet is a multipurpose tool, and though some users could care less about upload, there are those of us who would gladly pay for and use extra upload capacity. Exactly why should an ISP charge 10 times the amount for say a 1.5/1.5mbit cable line than a 3000/256 line? why does it make any difference which way the data is flowing? at the ISP isn't the connection symmetrical? So if someone wants more upload, why won't ISP's offer it! Even existing cable and DSL lines are capable of more than the top tiers providers give users. I've heard that cable can do at least 5mbps upload, yet only one cable company in all of North America offers 5mbps to it's users? Commonly used ADSL can do up to 1mbps up and 8mbps down, yet only one provider offers that as well? What's so wrong with giving users whatever they're interested in speed wise? The internet is a computer network after all. It shouldn't matter if you're on a T1 or a cable line, or an OC12 connection. If you're paying for net access, then provide it in both directions at something greater than slow, especially though in the upload direction! | |
| | | expert007
join:2006-01-10
Buffalo, NY | Re: Hmmm Please....please.....tell me what its like....
Thinking of piping an OC155 to my home....lol | |
| | | expert007
join:2006-01-10
Buffalo, NY | Re: Hmmm I mean OC3.....just as perverted an idea...lol | |
| | NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by McLovin  :Didn't Bill Gates once say something along the lines of "640Kbps should be enough for anybody...". Hmmmm.... But he said that in like 1995, when broadband was just giving birth. Actually, the attribution for 1981, and about computer memory. That is when Bill Gates supposedly said, "640 KBytes is all any application should ever need." I can't find any definitive proof that he actually said that; and, apparently, the 640 KByte limitation was imposed by the Intel addressing scheme of the 8080 processor. IBM apparently chose that over a competing Motorola processor in order to save $10 per computer in building cost.
Now, if only I could determine that remark was an urban legend.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
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McLovin
Chicka chicka yeah
Premium
join:2005-06-12
Fairbanks, AK
clubs:
·GCI.net
·PTIAlaska.NET
1 edit | Re: Hmmm Ahhhh so it was for RAM. Fair enough, though it could be attributed to broadband as well, but hey, 640K broadband is crap. C'mon, 80KBps downloads? I live with 2.5KBps at home....
As far as at work, all of the speedtests I have run from speedtest.net and the like, nothing will test over 20Mbps. In the morning, before the net gets congested, Apple 1080p HD trailers will load the full 160+MB in a few seconds. The test I always did for a while was do the OS X 10.4.9 Rollup update for the Intel processors, which is in the ballpark of 330MB. Watch it download at about 9 MB/sec. But when you get to speeds like this, the hard drive, and it's write speed are a pretty sucky limitation to live with. The computers we get at work are loaded with ATA100 IDE hard drives. Not the best thing for this hefty of a test. Pretty cool to see still. Google Earth also takes absolutely no streaming time if you are running a fast computer. I brought my HP laptop (1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo), I was able to nav through Google Earth and jump across the globe with no hesitation. The Grand Canyon graphics load instantaneously. Has anyone else ever played around on a fiber pipe (and I don't mean FiOS, as much as you think that is real fiber)?
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Want my opnion, see »....Sucks
My Babies: Intel D865PERL, P4 3.2Ghz, 1024MB DDR, XFX 6800 Ultra, XP Pro. - eMac 1.25Ghz G4, 512MB DDR, SuperDrive. HP dv6000 lappy, 1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2. Total HDD cap. 1.5TB | |
| | | | | | | | NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by McLovin :Ahhhh so it was for RAM. Fair enough, though it could be attributed to broadband as well, but hey, 640K broadband is crap. C'mon, 80KBps downloads? I live with 2.5KBps at home.... AFAIK, 640kb/s is not a natural speed increment for ADSL service. 256kb/s, 384kb/s, 768kb/s and 1,536kb/s seem to be the natural increments for sub 3M servie.
As far as at work, all of the speedtests I have run from speedtest.net and the like, nothing will test over 20Mbps. In the morning, before the net gets congested, Apple 1080p HD trailers will load the full 160+MB in a few seconds. The test I always did for a while was do the OS X 10.4.9 Rollup update for the Intel processors, which is in the ballpark of 330MB. Watch it download at about 9 MB/sec. But when you get to speeds like this, the hard drive, and it's write speed are a pretty sucky limitation to live with. The computers we get at work are loaded with ATA100 IDE hard drives. Not the best thing for this hefty of a test. Pretty cool to see still. Google Earth also takes absolutely no streaming time if you are running a fast computer. I brought my HP laptop (1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo), I was able to nav through Google Earth and jump across the globe with no hesitation. The Grand Canyon graphics load instantaneously. Has anyone else ever played around on a fiber pipe (and I don't mean FiOS, as much as you think that is real fiber)?
Real bandwidth, alas, costs real money. Until the BW providers start selling BW at consumer level prices, consumer level Internet will always be a shadow of what the real Internet is like.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
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supernac
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO | I doubt your HD's are a limiting factor, ATA100 = 100MB /second.  | |
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McLovin
Chicka chicka yeah
Premium
join:2005-06-12
Fairbanks, AK
clubs:
·GCI.net
·PTIAlaska.NET
1 edit | Re: Hmmm said by supernac :I doubt your HD's are a limiting factor, ATA100 = 100MB /second. Wow......
ATA100 = 100 megaBITS per second.
Translates into write speeds just above 12 megaBYTES per second. But over time, that write speed also wears down as the plates in the hdd wear out.
Edit: Forgot to add the obligatory wink. - There, now I can feel cool too.
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Want my opnion, see »....Sucks
My Babies: Intel D865PERL, P4 3.2Ghz, 1024MB DDR, XFX 6800 Ultra, XP Pro. - eMac 1.25Ghz G4, 512MB DDR, SuperDrive. HP dv6000 lappy, 1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2. Total HDD cap. 1.5TB | |
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koolman2
Premium
join:2002-10-01
Anchorage, AK | Re: Hmmm The plates wear out? Don't they hover above the platters at 3 nm?
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koolman2
Premium
join:2002-10-01
Anchorage, AK
·GCI.net
| Re: Hmmm That's what low-level formats fix. However, most of the time the rest of the drive is wearing out from use by the time a low level format is ever needed, so they become useless.
Oh, and I thought you meant the platters, not the read/write heads.
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There's no place like ::1. | |
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PolarBear
The bear formerly known as aaron8301
Premium
join:2005-01-03
·CableOne
| said by McLovin :Didn't Bill Gates once say something along the lines of "640Kbps should be enough for anybody...". Hmmmm.... But he said that in like 1995, when broadband was just giving birth. No. In 1981, Bill Gates said that "640 k ought to be enough for anyone," and he was referring to RAM.
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. -- Mitch Ratcliffe | |
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Oleg
Bellsouth Fastaccess
Premium
join:2003-12-08
Birmingham, AL | Re: How Much Bandwidth Do You Really Need? I need about 1-2mbits upload speed. | |
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Rob A
Same Old Jets
Premium
join:2005-01-17
Pompton Plains, NJ | Not much Hell I could probably get by on 1Mbps... | |
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pokesph
It Is Almost Fast
Premium
join:2001-06-25
Sacramento, CA
clubs: | connect speed I'd like it to start out at 100/100 since thats what most current networking systems are doing.. then as usage / needs increase, move towards Gb+ speeds
mmm.. 2GigaE *drools* | |
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hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY
clubs:
| Re: connect speed said by pokesph :I'd like it to start out at 100/100 since thats what most current networking systems are doing.. then as usage / needs increase, move towards Gb+ speeds mmm.. 2GigaE *drools* and you want to pay $30 bucks as well eh?
Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
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| bandit8623
join:2004-09-08
Elk River, MN
| bandwidth what people dont realize is u dont need a 6 meg connection dl for multiple pc's in ur home. the limitation is when u have a 6 meg dl and a 384 upload. its not the dl thats hurting u its ur upload. i can run 5 gaming pc's at once with my 1.5 dl and 1.0 upload. | |
| notwrth10
join:2007-03-03
1001EB | I got the answer to the question Just enough to where the average american can look like an ass.
Ok how many points do I get? | |
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martissimo
join:2001-12-01
Las Vegas, NV
clubs:
| dont know how much i need but i know i need more
i have 4 computers online, a xbox 360, a wii, a ps2 (playing some mmorpg or something), voip, it barely handles it at times (and there is very little filesharing stuff here, certainly no upload other than the gaming basically) | |
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captnhook
join:2001-02-20
NY | 1 Terabit 1 TBps would keep things humming along nicely.
Thank you very much | |
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cork1958
Cork
join:2000-02-26
Fruitport, MI
·Verizon Online DSL
·Charter Pipeline
| fine with me Yep,
6Mbps would be fine with me. Even the 5/512 I have now is ok with me, as long as it doesn't go over $40 a month. It's not the speed that means anything, it's the price, mainly.
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Yep, we're back to Windows and Opera!! | |
| jdir
join:2001-05-04
Santa Clara, CA | 640K should be enough Yeah - sure, and consumer only need 6Mbps. | |
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furlonium
Computer Over? Virus equals Very Yes?
join:2002-05-08
Bethlehem, PA
1 edit | Happy now I have 20/2 and am happy. I rarely use the upload, but it's nice to have.
I'm usually maxing the 20mbps on Newsgroups, so I'd say that any increase there would be welcome, but not needed, really. Downloading a 4.7GB ISO in 32 minutes makes me giddy, but 16 minutes would be insane 
edit: I type like a drunken emu when I first wake up. | |
| macdude22
join:2005-09-08
Grinnell, IA
| More is needed I'd settle for 1 Meg, I have "fantastic" $85(with modem rental and they won't let you use your own) DSL thats 768/512, tests out to about 550/350. I meticulously manage our bandwidth on the router to maintain reasonable responsiveness for our home. We have several computers as well as multiple game consoles. We use xbox live extensively for HD TV Content. I download multiple distributions of linux often. I VPN into work often. We use skype to talk to family across the globe. Pandora or some sort of internet radio is usually streaming somewhere in the home. We send lots of pictures from iphoto to freinds and family via email or to web storage and sites. For us a really satasfactory connection would be 20/2 or more, but 10/1 would likely be sufficient to remove most of the bottlenecks we currently have and still allow responsive gaming, voip, browsing, etc.... Hell youtube chokes our connection and you can spend hours and gigs of bandwidth in a night there alone. This Web 2.0 craze isn't helping any either demanding more BW then ever. With the new services coming out these days I'd say 6 Meg connections are on the conservative side of what will be acceptable by your average digital consumer. On the other token, anything, ANYTHING is better than dial up. | |
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gatorkram
Spelling and Grammer impared
Premium
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC
clubs:
·Embarq
 ·linode
| Need vs Want What we want, is never what we need. We want 100/100 connections. The sooner we have them, the sooner we will want more, and the sooner we will also need more.
We sit around today, saying, the average person only needs 6mbit down, and 512 or 768 up. That is because, we the mainstream heavy users are being forced to use the same crappy speeds the average people are.
Where would computers be today, if the average need was used to control what the extreme users could have? This is why bandwidth is so poor in so many places around the world. They are letting the average people dictate the speeds, not we the high-end users.
Until they wake up, and see what they are doing, we will never be on par with other hightech technologies.
When in the United States history, has average every been enough for us? It should be a matter of pride if you ask me.
Sadly, it seems more like its a matter of money, or lack of vision for the future.
If we don't wake up and act soon, what we need, will truly be out of reach, and we will never be the leaders.
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Give me bandwidth or give me death! | |
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MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA
·Windstream
| "Teh Intarnet" is not ready for the bandwidth hogs "When you start adding up how much bandwidth that the average home with a couple of teenagers might consume between 6 and 9 at night -- two or three people watching HDTV shows, playing music from the Internet, playing online games -- the bandwidth demands are going to be gigantic"
Well maybe that just means that the technology available to most end users isn't ready to stream HDTV! The bandwidth used by most online games isn't much; it's latency that's critical to them. I've supported over 200 users (typical email/web browsing) sharing a 6mbit DSL connection so don't tell me it's overwhelmed by 2-3 people in one family.
To expect an ISP to spend billions of dollars to implement FIOS to every doorstep and then face customers willing to pay no more than $50/mo is ludicrous. They're a business, not a charity. Sure, it'd be nice, but they're just not going to do that as long as it doesn't make financial sense.
Do you think ISPs have the capacity to support thousands of users at 100mbit+, all downloading whatever they can simply because they can? All of this costs money, and not the kind a $10 rate increase would pay for in less than a century.
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John M - Cranky network guy | |
| vinnie97
join:2003-12-05
Mesquite, TX | VoIP Mr. Wegleitner forgot to mention another piece of the bandwidth pie, VoIP. Too bad AT&T doesn't have that frame of mind and understanding with regards to the potential bandwidth needs NOW. | |
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supernac
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO | Re: VoIP VOIP uses very little bandwidth, latency is MUCH more important. | |
| massysett
join:2006-01-04
Silver Spring, MD | Obviously never visited your forums Um, most people have never visited your forums. BBR forum users are not typical broadband users. For most users' current needs, yes, 6 Mbps is plenty. | |
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