Written in Switzerland from my 25GBps symmetric connection (for like 60$/month) that I have for a couple of years 🤷♂️
Also for personal use the difference between 1Gbps and 25 (or, I guess, 100GBps) is essentially zero… your everyday connection is via WiFi (good luck to get more than 1GBps there) or on a home server/NAS/workstation where likely you run batch jobs where the difference between 1 minute or 5 minutes is not a huge deal (and yes I am not saying 1 vs 25 because at that speed generally the bottleneck is the place where you are getting data from)
Seconding this, while I have the option for multi-gig at my address, I don’t have the need, once you get around gigabit upload speeds life is fine.
I can upload hours of uncompressed gameplay to YouTube in under an hour, and that’s limited mostly by their ingest speeds (≈300Mbps) and not my end, so that’s plenty.
With all that said, the option for consumers is great, I’m thankful I have that choice, wish more people had it too.
I have symmetrical 10 Gbps at home ($30/mo) and I’ll agree. When it’s nice when you have big updates, for most households 1 Gbps is going to be just fine. As you say, the vast majority of users are bottlenecked by Wi-Fi.
The bigger crime are all the asymmetrical connections that people on technologies like Cable TV networks have, where you get 1-2 Gbps down but only something tiny like 50 Mbps up. This results in crappy video calls, makes off-site/remote backups unfeasible, means you can’t host anything at home, etc.
you get 1-2 Gbps down but only something tiny like 50 Mbps up
That’s exactly what you get in Australia, even if you have FTTP, 95% of ISPs only offer up to 1000/50Mbps, and that’s if you live in the big cities. Mine costs ~US$70/mo btw. And they have a ‘typical evening speed’ that drops to 860/42Mbps (I’ve never heard of such a concept outside Australia. Yeah, totally not a scam).
A handful ISPs offer 1000/400Mbps and you’ll be looking at ~US$125/mo. Anything faster you’ll be handed with astronomical commercial bills.
Interesting–when I made a similar argument on Reddit some years ago, networking geniuses assured me that they needed more than 1Gbps to play lag-free games. This on /r/programming, no less.
This setup has the benefit that my workstation has also all possible bandwidth. Services run in nixos containers (that are awesome!) for isolation from the routing.
Not to mention the server is the bottleneck at that point. I have access to 2.5Gb/2.5Gb but only pay for 500/500 because, even that is faster than most servers, and of course all the mobile devices aren’t pushing more than 400 on WiFi.
Plus what consumer can even support higher bandwidth? Computers are starting to come with 2.5G Ethernet, switches are coming down in price but still pretty expensive for home use (and complex), and any existing wiring is likely close to topped out.
For anything faster, you’re all too likely to need enterprise equipment for a lot more money and a lot more complexity.
I’ve briefly considered updating to faster internet but
I don’t have a rational need
I’d have to replace switches and wiring
I don’t have the time to commit
even building a file server that can sustain that bandwidth is a challenge
Written in Switzerland from my 25GBps symmetric connection (for like 60$/month) that I have for a couple of years 🤷♂️
Also for personal use the difference between 1Gbps and 25 (or, I guess, 100GBps) is essentially zero… your everyday connection is via WiFi (good luck to get more than 1GBps there) or on a home server/NAS/workstation where likely you run batch jobs where the difference between 1 minute or 5 minutes is not a huge deal (and yes I am not saying 1 vs 25 because at that speed generally the bottleneck is the place where you are getting data from)
Seconding this, while I have the option for multi-gig at my address, I don’t have the need, once you get around gigabit upload speeds life is fine.
I can upload hours of uncompressed gameplay to YouTube in under an hour, and that’s limited mostly by their ingest speeds (≈300Mbps) and not my end, so that’s plenty.
With all that said, the option for consumers is great, I’m thankful I have that choice, wish more people had it too.
I have a 40Mbps down, 5Mbps up connection for $30. Consider yourself as real lucky.
I do 🙂
I have symmetrical 10 Gbps at home ($30/mo) and I’ll agree. When it’s nice when you have big updates, for most households 1 Gbps is going to be just fine. As you say, the vast majority of users are bottlenecked by Wi-Fi.
The bigger crime are all the asymmetrical connections that people on technologies like Cable TV networks have, where you get 1-2 Gbps down but only something tiny like 50 Mbps up. This results in crappy video calls, makes off-site/remote backups unfeasible, means you can’t host anything at home, etc.
That’s exactly what you get in Australia, even if you have FTTP, 95% of ISPs only offer up to 1000/50Mbps, and that’s if you live in the big cities. Mine costs ~US$70/mo btw. And they have a ‘typical evening speed’ that drops to 860/42Mbps (I’ve never heard of such a concept outside Australia. Yeah, totally not a scam).
A handful ISPs offer 1000/400Mbps and you’ll be looking at ~US$125/mo. Anything faster you’ll be handed with astronomical commercial bills.
Hi from Canada. 1.5 Gbps for $66 a month plus cellphone plan of $50 🤦🏼
Interesting–when I made a similar argument on Reddit some years ago, networking geniuses assured me that they needed more than 1Gbps to play lag-free games. This on /r/programming, no less.
There’s your culprit
You can always hope it’s better than it actually is.
Lol! 10Mbps is usually more than enough. It’s a common misconception that more speed equals less latency.
I’m sure I have the same ISP as you, but so far I didn’t splurge to buy 10G or 25G gear.
If you don’t mind telling, what router and switches did you go for?
Or did you go the Michael Stapelberg route?
Kinda, yeah. Gaming workstation + Network card (and optics) from fs.com + Nixos.
This setup has the benefit that my workstation has also all possible bandwidth. Services run in nixos containers (that are awesome!) for isolation from the routing.
Not to mention the server is the bottleneck at that point. I have access to 2.5Gb/2.5Gb but only pay for 500/500 because, even that is faster than most servers, and of course all the mobile devices aren’t pushing more than 400 on WiFi.
Plus what consumer can even support higher bandwidth? Computers are starting to come with 2.5G Ethernet, switches are coming down in price but still pretty expensive for home use (and complex), and any existing wiring is likely close to topped out.
For anything faster, you’re all too likely to need enterprise equipment for a lot more money and a lot more complexity.
I’ve briefly considered updating to faster internet but