Verizon FiOS → Do I need to upgrade my speed? [looking for a way to monitor

I currently have FiOS internet 15/5 service. I am considering upgrading to the 50/25 service but, before I do, I'd like to monitor my traffic in real time to see that I could really benefit from this upgrade. In other words, if my connected devices aren't even scratching the surface of my current 15/5 service, I don't want to spend the extra.

I've got a main machine which stays on all the time, it's the family computer. It surfs the web and occasionally downloads tv shows, music, etc.

there are a total of 3 laptops all of which are usually not using the network simultaneously and, when they are used, its general surfing. the other devices are an AppleTV, our smartTV, an iPhone, and iPOD.

In general, although my family has many connected devices, I don't feel like any of them use a particularly large amount of bandwidth and it they ever do, Its certainly not at the same time as others.

I'm recently interested in this because I was using my iphone to facetime my daughter at her grandfathers house. he has comcast 6mb service. Anyhow, it was fairly choppy and I wonder if my network is just bogged down.

Is there a utility I can use to monitor my actual bandwidth in real time to make the determination?

BTW, please don't flame me as I realized that I sounded pretty stupid in my post. It just occurred to me that speed and bandwidth are two separate things. So, I suppose this boils down to an educated recommendation from you all!

I'm not going to make a recommendation, however more than likely your Facetime experience was because the Comcast connection lacked the upload speed required for the video to be smooth.

If you listen to Verizon's BS, you'd think that the more devices you have directly relates to which package you should subscribe to. Seems like you already realize this is not the case at all. Just having the devices laying around on the network does not have a measurable impact on throughput.

It really depends on how much you plan to use at the same time. I routinely max out my 75/35 connection with just a single machine. For me, time is the most important factor, so I opt for the fastest package I can afford to save time downloading/uploading.

If you don't mind waiting a few extra minutes for something to download, the 15/5 service may be enough for you.

The other aspect is concurrent usage. If somebody in your household uses a service like Netflix often, then you should subtract that out of your total bandwidth (although, it won't always work out that way). If another user likes to video chat a lot, then slice a bit more off. After figuring out all of that, you should see how much bandwidth you're left with in the worst case scenario and then determine if you'd be satisfied downloading or doing anything else at that speed. If concurrent usage in your home is rare, then this is almost a non-issue.

FYI, 15/5 is really 25/5 if you have TV as well.

With the recent tiers, I tried the 75/35, 50/25 and now 15/5 and they are all great values for the performance they proivde ( 84/40 58/38 25/5 real world with TV )

If your doing torrents, work from home or lots of video something more than 15/5 maybe useful. the 15/5 to 50/25 is only 10 bucks more and is the best bang for the buck of all the new tiers

When did 15Mbps/5Mbps start running at 25Mbps/5Mbps? Last I heard it ran at 20/5. I saw about a month ago a 15/5 connection clocking 25Mbps down so I can confirm.

It looks to be around April or so based on my speed test history.

thanks for all the input!

I don't have TV. I checked my speed, it is definitely 15/5. Verizon recently changed their prices on me. I have been getting 15/5 for $54.99/mo for 2 years. now it's like 70 bucks. That's quite an increase and, I figured why not just get the 25/15! I may just do that as one poster said, 'its about time' and I can get down with that.

my only alternative is comcast but their upstream speeds are horrible by comparison to FiOS in my area.

just set up a QoS for each device, you can even set precise bandwidth for each of the 4 ports on the Fios router to allocate bandwidth to each person in the house and their traffic wont effect anyone else.

as for you're grandfathers comcast connection, he probably has an old non-DOCSIS3 modem from Comcast which gets effected by every other customer in the region, but also not enough upload overhead as said before which is more important than just download speed with how the internet works.

fios doesnt suffer from that, but you still have to apply a QoS to manage it if ppl are going to be streaming alot of data and not just basic browsing of web forums or occasional youtube'ing