Internet Qs??

[TxArcheo]

All -

Have never had a need for internet at home but the wife has been working from home more and more and is in need of a good internet connection for web based meets and call-ins. In Austin, Spectrum has a decent deal for 400 mbps download speeds.... would that be sufficient speed for work related meets etc.? How will that speed handle movie streaming, etc? We have no kids so it will be just us with phones and tablets surfing the inter-webs.

Any insights/recommendations appreciated.

[TxArcheo]

Ugh...wrong forum. Sorry

Mods can you please move to Campfire. Thanks

[roberts]

I know it is the wrong forum, but I have Spectrum here in Austin and I have been working out of my house for the past couple of years. No problems with me hosting/attending meetings and doing work at the same time. Spectrum has had a couple of outages, but nothing too serious.

[TxArcheo]

Thanks for the info. Any idea what your internet speed is? Spectrum offers 200, 400, 600, & 900 mbps...I assume more is better but their best bundle deals only offer the 400. My issue is I don’t know what 400 mbps can/can’t do....

Thanks again

[Mike D]

My wife and I work from home from time to time including Teams/Skype meetings. We also stream TV, YouTube, etc.

We live out in the sticks so our options are very limited. I currently only have 30 down/5 up connection and typically have no problems doing what we need to do including streaming to multiple TVs and my son playing PS4 online. That being said most of my connections are hard wire, not wifi.

Point being high speed is great but not absolutely necessary. I would venture to say that 50mbps would do everything most people need to do. If you strictly use wifi only then maybe bump to a 100mbps connection as you won’t get full speed over wifi.

We had a 300mbps fiber connection in our previous house with fiber I to the house. Even with that and the best consumer wifi router available on good days we would only get 180-200 mbps and still had buffering issues while streaming TV.


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[Samson]

400mbps download is plenty for work meetings and just about anything else you would possibly use it for.

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[bfuqua99]

You will have more than enough with 400 mbps. I run the tech department for a school district of 2400 stufents. With all students and staff present we max out at using around 450 mbps. There is a lot of streaming educational videos and many other online activities that go on constantly through out the day. I wouldn't worry about needing more than 400 mbps.

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[tex4k]

I'm a technology dumb---, but I have learned one thing, check on a companies history. I live in a part of the world where we just barely got past party lines and rotary phones when the internet showed up. Been a constant stream of we do internet better companies going belly up or getting sold off to company x. A reliable provider that's gonna be around not causing heartburn is worth something.

[-HIC-]

If it is cable it will not be symetrical, likely 400 down and 25-50 up, and your ping speed is the real world measurement of what you will percieve to be 'fast'. Having said that, 400 is plenty for what you are doing and even on wired devices I doubt you would see that on a bandwidth test. You would only see 400 on your ISP device directly to their servers.

If you have any issues you can setup QoS on most modern gateways to prioritize voice, etc.

Good luck!

[futureagg]

We are in Houston. Using xfinity. The numbers these companies tout about are a hard wired connection(Ethernet). Whatever they are usually saying you will get expect half that (within 15feet of router) on WiFi.

You can go to google and search “google speed test” this will be a good indication of what you are currently getting in your office/work area.

I have found anything with 150mbps+ download and 12mbps+ upload is good enough for probably 95% of people.

I pay for 400mbps so I had an Ethernet port put into our office to make sure I didn’t have any issues. Which I now hit 350+ download and 25+ upload.


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[roberts]

400mbps download is plenty for work meetings and just about anything else you would possibly use it for.

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I have the 400 down and forget what the upload speed is, and my has been streaming movies while I work. No issues.

[TxArcheo]

Thanks everyone, I’ve learned some things so I really appreciate everyone’s input.

[Conquest]

i have spectrum in atx too, i use whatever the cheapest one is and it's good enough for sure.

the real bottleneck when working is the corporate vpn bandwidth.

[MadHatter]

I have the 400 down and forget what the upload speed is, and my has been streaming movies while I work. No issues.

You could do that with 15 mbps.
The guy who get 15mbps, and the guy who gets 500mbps, operate at the exact same speed.
Your mbps has nothing to do with speed.
Speed is latency/ping.
You could have 10mbps and a 5ms ping and stream movies all day.
You can have 1000mbps and a 200ms ping, and you can't stream anything.
They give you those 400mbps plans because it's easily available, even though you'll never use even 10% of it.
Sorta like pouring out a cup of water, or pouring out a 5 gallon bucket of water.
The water travels at the same speed on its way to the ground.
400mbps is like dumping a swimming pool over your head everytime you want a drink of water.
Extreme overkill .

[MadHatter]

My wife and I work from home from time to time including Teams/Skype meetings. We also stream TV, YouTube, etc.

We live out in the sticks so our options are very limited. I currently only have 30 down/5 up connection and typically have no problems doing what we need to do including streaming to multiple TVs and my son playing PS4 online. That being said most of my connections are hard wire, not wifi.

Point being high speed is great but not absolutely necessary. I would venture to say that 50mbps would do everything most people need to do. If you strictly use wifi only then maybe bump to a 100mbps connection as you won’t get full speed over wifi.

We had a 300mbps fiber connection in our previous house with fiber I to the house. Even with that and the best consumer wifi router available on good days we would only get 180-200 mbps and still had buffering issues while streaming TV.


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You can always get full speed through your router, if it's capable, your the sole device connected, and there isn't any frequency ovelap/interference between the various devjce in your house.
I've run 1000s of speedtest for people to prove it.
I'm doing this with wireless shots, say nothing of having a hardwired copper or fiber line.