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Lets say we keep up to date with politics? Are we policy makers? We moan and groan with how the other side, our side or no side did X Y and Z but the only time we have any say is at the ballot box.
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10 Gbps home internet
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Lets say we keep up to date with politics? Are we policy makers? We moan and groan with how the other side, our side or no side did X Y and Z but the only time we have any say is at the ballot box.
Why bring up the news? ;-)
I get the wow factor having the fastest of anything but there's such a thing as Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility where in each increase in bandwidth provides less additional value than the previous increase because eventually your attention, the server, the website or the application (not the connection) becomes the bottleneck.
If you know WHY you need this speed, you dont post your question here.
Otherwise for normal people 200-500mbps is more than enough.
I survive with 100/100 optic fiber with minor inconveniences one a month or so
Otherwise for normal people 200-500mbps is more than enough.
I survive with 100/100 optic fiber with minor inconveniences one a month or so
IvyKing
macrumors 6502a
My experience with fiber optic vs cable modem has been the increase in download speed is noticeable, especially when doing software updates. The impressive difference, however, is having symmetric upload speeds. One frequently observed improvement was sending photos by iMessage, with cable there was a 3 to 4 second per picture but negligible wait with the fiber connection.
MacBH928
macrumors G3
IvyKing
macrumors 6502a
Frontier is offering 7 Gig fiber at $119/mo in at least some markets.
When you have multiple things going on at the same time on more than one device in the household. Rare yes but happens.
Like a upload and a download. Not just that but you get the picture.
I agree that multiple devices increase bandwidth demand. But that doesn't invalidate the law of diminishing marginal utility. It just shifts the point where diminishing returns begin.
For example if your household only peaks at 300–500 Mbps across all devices combined, upgrading from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps doesn't make Netflix look better, web pages load noticeably faster, games lower latency or Zoom clearer. The extra 9 Gbps sits idle most of the time.
Eventually the bottleneck becomes the devices' Wi-Fi, the websites, the streaming service's bitrate limits, the game servers, storage speed or simply the fact that people can't consume data any faster. Unless you're regularly transferring massive files or serving hundreds of users the practical benefit becomes very small.
More devices does justify more bandwidth but they don't eliminate diminishing marginal utility. They simply move the threshold higher. For most households 1 Gbps is already beyond what they can meaningfully utilize most of the day. Going to 10 Gbps is often buying capacity that remains unused.
MacBH928
macrumors G3
I see your point but there is an interesting point. Wifi drops original speed as you go further.
So if you get:
100Mbps = Wifi will be 70mbps
1gbps = wifi will be 600Mbps
10gbps = wifi will be 5gbps
just making a point that you won't get 100% if your subscription speed over wifi and over walls, so you need to subscribe to a higher plan so wifi will cut it down to the speed you really want. Also put into consideration ISP usually advertise max. possible speed with 1Gbps you wont have 1Gbps all the time. So if you get 5Gbps and it drops, it will drop to 2Gbps. still higher than 1Gbps you are supposed to get (which might drop to 700 or 500).
Arctic Moose
macrumors 68000
In some cases the higher-bandwidth plans do get you lower latency.
Anyhow, why are you arguing on the internet instead of being outside burning calories?
splifingate
Contributor
Even with 1Gbps symmetrical fiber, I often spend time waiting for the receiving server to respond.
Sometimes this is because of waiting for rust to spin-up, and other times I'm just one-of-many sharing a 'dedicated' 1Gbps pipe to the server.
Really enjoy the gems that don't restrict their pipes 😉
Sometimes this is because of waiting for rust to spin-up, and other times I'm just one-of-many sharing a 'dedicated' 1Gbps pipe to the server.
Really enjoy the gems that don't restrict their pipes 😉
"right now" = when the message was posted, i.e. six years ago.
There is an AT&T tower about 1/2 mile away from me that I can see from my house and 5G is still unreliable. I see anywhere from 2 bars to 4 bars on my phones and tablets. A friend that lives a mile from the tower tried AT&T's Air 5G internet and his internet would drop connections every time he tried to watch a video on his computer or watch TV.
The signal is fine for making phone calls but I would not rely on it for my main internet source.
Though to be honest, there is something about the small town I live in as there is also a US Cellular tower about 1/2 mile away and US Cellular service is spotty at best in town.
MacBH928
macrumors G3
even then it was not thousands of dollars a moth.
something wrong with your hardware or att tower. I have 5G internet and i have been getting 300-400Mbps over wifi since 2020. Connection is pretty solid.
I can see lower signal strength when I am inside versus when outside. But the bigger issue was my friend's router not holding a connection. We placed his router in the front dining room window where you can see the tower clearly and he still had connection drops. AT&T sent him several routers and all had the same issues.
I even went as far as opening up the window and placing the router on the outside sill, which didn't help.
There is definitely something with the town I live in as the only cell services that work reliably is AT&T and US Cellular (spotty at times). Verizon and T-Mobile phones do not work inside of city limits.
I can't blame the electrical grid as that would also affect me when using my HF, VHF, and UHF amateur radios. I do not have an issue with electrical noise in any of my radios.
I even went as far as opening up the window and placing the router on the outside sill, which didn't help.
There is definitely something with the town I live in as the only cell services that work reliably is AT&T and US Cellular (spotty at times). Verizon and T-Mobile phones do not work inside of city limits.
I can't blame the electrical grid as that would also affect me when using my HF, VHF, and UHF amateur radios. I do not have an issue with electrical noise in any of my radios.
You might be right. Sorry for how terse my other message was: I was conscious of the "Your Mac will restart for updates in 30 seconds" so was scrambling to post 🙂
MacBH928
macrumors G3
look, there is 2 kinds of 5G: sub-6Ghz and mmwave
6Ghz will give you 100-700Mbps with solid signal
mmwave will give you the crazy 4Gbps speed but it can be obstructed even by a human. you kind of have to be under the tower in an open space for it to work.
i am guessing you have the mmwave or set it up to that, maybe there is an option in there to turn on sub-6Ghz. You will know if your 4G signal is strong. if your 4G signal is spotty, then your town really has a problem or they are lying to you somehow.
I'm not going to try doing anything as my friend got rid of the very unreliable AT&T Air 5G and went with Spectrum Internet. And I also use Spectrum. AT&T send my friend several routers to try and I did try changing the connection settings on the router with no changes.
As far as cellular service in town, there is the AT&T tower and the US Cellular tower. US Cellular's service was spotty when my kids had that service through their mother. AT&T works fine when it comes to phones and tablets, though my iPads are usually on LTE instead of 5G as LTE has a stronger signal.
And yes there is definitely something about the town that keeps other cell services from working inside city limits.
I had Sprint when I first moved to town and had free roaming on my plan. The phone would not get any signal at all even on roaming until I went outside of city limits. The same goes fro T-Mobile and Verizon. I had a Spectrum tech out the other day and he could not get a signal with his Verizon phone.
I don't know what it is about the town, And I can't blame terrain as it is fairly flat.
As far as cellular service in town, there is the AT&T tower and the US Cellular tower. US Cellular's service was spotty when my kids had that service through their mother. AT&T works fine when it comes to phones and tablets, though my iPads are usually on LTE instead of 5G as LTE has a stronger signal.
And yes there is definitely something about the town that keeps other cell services from working inside city limits.
I had Sprint when I first moved to town and had free roaming on my plan. The phone would not get any signal at all even on roaming until I went outside of city limits. The same goes fro T-Mobile and Verizon. I had a Spectrum tech out the other day and he could not get a signal with his Verizon phone.
I don't know what it is about the town, And I can't blame terrain as it is fairly flat.
IvyKing
macrumors 6502a
The thought coming to mind is getting hold of a spectrum analyzer to see the the RF environment is like. I'd also would inquire whether either AT&T or US Cellular had ever done measurements of their antenna patterns. Back in the bad old days, the FCC required AM broadcast stations with directional antennas to show that the nulls were meeting the terms on the license.
It very well could be that the entire town (pop 1200) is in a null of both towers. Though AT&T phones and tablets work fine. And the AT&T Air 5G internet would work better if an outside antenna was installed.
There is a local FM radio station about 7 miles from our town that has a very dirty signal. But it generally does NOT interfere with amateur radio or GMRS. And checking the harmonics of FM broadcast frequencies, the harmonics of 103.9 MHz does not fall within amateur radio bands, GMRS, or cell service. And I have never had any issues with the raid station when it comes to HF or UHF transceivers. And yes cellular devices are transceivers. I occasionally have an issue on the 2m VHF band but only when close to the radio station.
The town and surrounding are has a lot of abandoned coal and clay mine under it. But that shouldn't affect cell service or other transceivers either. Otherwise I wood see it on my HF, HVF, and UHF radios.
IvyKing
macrumors 6502a
FWIW, quite a bit of my work involved RF electronics from ~150kHz to 60 GHz and you seem to have a good grasp of RF as well.
My comment about using a spectrum analyzer was to rule out interfering signals, and I wonder if it was the towers that were getting interfered with as opposed to the routers. Another thought is doing a bit of war driving with the router to find out what parts of town get good signals.
I don't have access to an AT&T Air router as my friend cancelled his service after all of the trouble he had.
I do want to get a couple of antennas and learn how to use my NanoVNA as a spectrum analyzer. I know it won't be as accurate as a pro grade spectrum analyzer but it will work.
As it stands, our only option for 1GB internet is to go with Spectrum cable internet. AT&T Air has been unreliable for many here. And Starlink won't work for me since I need the ability to have incoming UPD and TCP ports open which they do not allow.
IvyKing
macrumors 6502a
Copper Mountain has an app note on using their VNA's as a spectrum analyzer detailing limitations of using their VNA's as spectrum analyzers. Bottom line is that while a VNA is not the equivalent of a good spectrum analyzer it can still make useful measurements.
The Copper Mountain VNA's are very nice, especially with the auto calibration accessory, but they are not cheap.