5 ms·

43% with less than two choices for 25mbit is more concerning. 25mbit is around what you'd need for a family of four without being bandwidth crunched all the tim

43% with less than two choices for 25mbit is more concerning. 25mbit is around what you'd need for a family of four without being bandwidth crunched all the time.

dsr_ 9y ago
A bit more than that, but not much more. I changed from 50Mb/s to 1000Mb/s service a few months ago; latency is much the same, which means that when the pipe is not crowded, I really can't tell the difference. (But it's wonderful headroom for large file transfers.)
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Well, latency is never going to change, no matter what plan you use. You can't really sell a faster speed of light....
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - undersuit 9y ago
    Latency can definitely improve from where we are at. The speed of light is different through different materials, that's why some people are using hollow fiber optic cables to have lower latency connections. Laying a more direct line would also improve latency, my connections to Seattle backtrack about a hundred miles east before heading out west again according to traces. Faster routing hardware would shave off a few milliseconds. Economic factors hold back latency improvements for the majority of internet users, not hard physical limits.
  - SteveNuts 9y ago
    Speed of light isn't the only factor in latency. Quality of the equipment, routing protocols, etc are far more important since those are the things we can actually change.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      And sometimes more important than either of those, the choice between directional radio and cable of any kind (fiber or copper).
      - bri3d 9y ago
        I strongly suspect that for an average consumer, latency is driven by the TCP stack on every piece of hardware close to the edge (local machine, router, modem, ISP point of presence) to a much higher degree than the transmission medium or backhaul. Consumer internet has a long way to go before it becomes HFT backhaul-grade.
        microcolonel 9y ago
        Well, for a considerable number of consumer deployments, it appears that internal reflection is the main source of latency. https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/network-latencies-and-speed-of-light/ https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/network-latencies-a...
  - mjevans 9y ago
    It might actually, mostly due to buffer bloat on some modem stacks. The anti-buffer bloat stuff from the recent DOCSIS (I forget if it was 3.0 or the one after) are supposed to help a LOT with latency issues. Not as good as fiber but close enough that global distance issues become dominant again.
    - bb88 9y ago
      edited: DOCSIS 3.1 adds the Active Queue Management. There's a lot of reason to believe this is true. I noticed that in some ping tests when I had a cable modem, RTT went to over 3 seconds for a ping to google when the uplink was saturated.
    - Animats 9y ago
      The "buffer bloat" guy has been useful. I've been arguing against big FIFO queues for decades, but he's more into PR and visibility than I am. Any place you have a major choke point, especially home router uplink connections, you need QoS, or fair queuing, or something, or queue delays will go through the roof. At least send the ACKs first.
- rhino369 9y ago
  I can't tell the difference between 75mbit and 900mbit. Most servers don't get anywhere near 900mbit. And my hardware is almost always a limiting facture (wifi, hdd speed, etc).
  - bb88 9y ago
    One way to do a test is to bittorrent something legal, say an Ubuntu DVD. If you use a transmission client (e.g.), you can change the upload speed of your client. Do one test at a low upload speed (5K/second), and one test just above your ISP's advertised upload speed. In the first case you should see your speed peak out around 850mb/s. In the second, if you have a bufferbloat situation, the download speed will drop significantly as the uploads push the download acks into a queue, forcing TCP to throttle heavily downwards.
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    Oh I can tell the difference between 75mbit and my current 800mbit. But only when I’m downloading new games off Xbox one. Finishes in minutes rather than 10s of minutes.
mhays 9y ago
I'm curious why you think 25 mbps is what you'd need for a family of four? Is there some sort of data out there for this? Netflix states you need 3.5 mbps for SD, 5.0 mbps for HD.[0] With a family of four, does this means everyone could be watching HD Netflix, and do various other browsing simultaneously, and still be under 25mbps? If so, wouldn't 25mbps be far above what a family of four would need "without being bandwidth crunched all the time"? (Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing) Especially since, likely more often than not, everyone in the house will not be streaming HD video simultaneously. The reason why I state this is because, while I get more speed is always better, we seem to often state X mbps is the bare minimum that should be achieved, but never say why. It makes it seem we are letting the perfect, or great, be the enemy of the good in some scenarios. For instance, if 10, 15, or 20 mbps is perfectly fine for most households, then shouldn't we use those numbers instead? [0]: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
- woodruffw 9y ago
  > Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download. 25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent, but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.
  - rhino369 9y ago
    That could be solved with better QoS on the router right? Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.
    - woodruffw 9y ago
      Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates. Edit: I meant to add this: We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we recognize that Internet transfers aren't getting any smaller. It's good to look at ways to improve the status quo (e.g., QoS), but we should also be looking to change the status quo itself.
yorby 9y ago
if your kids play Roblox, 25mbit is the bare minimum... this game appear to be very inefficient

43% with less than two choices for 25mbit is more concerning. 25mbit is around what you'd need for a family of four without being bandwidth crunched all the time.

dsr_ 9y ago

A bit more than that, but not much more. I changed from 50Mb/s to 1000Mb/s service a few months ago; latency is much the same, which means that when the pipe is not crowded, I really can't tell the difference. (But it's wonderful headroom for large file transfers.)

cortesoft 9y ago
Well, latency is never going to change, no matter what plan you use. You can't really sell a faster speed of light....
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- undersuit 9y ago
  Latency can definitely improve from where we are at. The speed of light is different through different materials, that's why some people are using hollow fiber optic cables to have lower latency connections. Laying a more direct line would also improve latency, my connections to Seattle backtrack about a hundred miles east before heading out west again according to traces. Faster routing hardware would shave off a few milliseconds. Economic factors hold back latency improvements for the majority of internet users, not hard physical limits.
- SteveNuts 9y ago
  Speed of light isn't the only factor in latency. Quality of the equipment, routing protocols, etc are far more important since those are the things we can actually change.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    And sometimes more important than either of those, the choice between directional radio and cable of any kind (fiber or copper).
    - bri3d 9y ago
      I strongly suspect that for an average consumer, latency is driven by the TCP stack on every piece of hardware close to the edge (local machine, router, modem, ISP point of presence) to a much higher degree than the transmission medium or backhaul. Consumer internet has a long way to go before it becomes HFT backhaul-grade.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        Well, for a considerable number of consumer deployments, it appears that internal reflection is the main source of latency. https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/network-latencies-and-speed-of-light/ https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/network-latencies-a...
- mjevans 9y ago
  It might actually, mostly due to buffer bloat on some modem stacks. The anti-buffer bloat stuff from the recent DOCSIS (I forget if it was 3.0 or the one after) are supposed to help a LOT with latency issues. Not as good as fiber but close enough that global distance issues become dominant again.
  - bb88 9y ago
    edited: DOCSIS 3.1 adds the Active Queue Management. There's a lot of reason to believe this is true. I noticed that in some ping tests when I had a cable modem, RTT went to over 3 seconds for a ping to google when the uplink was saturated.
  - Animats 9y ago
    The "buffer bloat" guy has been useful. I've been arguing against big FIFO queues for decades, but he's more into PR and visibility than I am. Any place you have a major choke point, especially home router uplink connections, you need QoS, or fair queuing, or something, or queue delays will go through the roof. At least send the ACKs first.
rhino369 9y ago
I can't tell the difference between 75mbit and 900mbit. Most servers don't get anywhere near 900mbit. And my hardware is almost always a limiting facture (wifi, hdd speed, etc).
- bb88 9y ago
  One way to do a test is to bittorrent something legal, say an Ubuntu DVD. If you use a transmission client (e.g.), you can change the upload speed of your client. Do one test at a low upload speed (5K/second), and one test just above your ISP's advertised upload speed. In the first case you should see your speed peak out around 850mb/s. In the second, if you have a bufferbloat situation, the download speed will drop significantly as the uploads push the download acks into a queue, forcing TCP to throttle heavily downwards.
- philliphaydon 9y ago
  Oh I can tell the difference between 75mbit and my current 800mbit. But only when I’m downloading new games off Xbox one. Finishes in minutes rather than 10s of minutes.

mhays 9y ago

I'm curious why you think 25 mbps is what you'd need for a family of four? Is there some sort of data out there for this? Netflix states you need 3.5 mbps for SD, 5.0 mbps for HD.[0] With a family of four, does this means everyone could be watching HD Netflix, and do various other browsing simultaneously, and still be under 25mbps? If so, wouldn't 25mbps be far above what a family of four would need "without being bandwidth crunched all the time"? (Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing) Especially since, likely more often than not, everyone in the house will not be streaming HD video simultaneously. The reason why I state this is because, while I get more speed is always better, we seem to often state X mbps is the bare minimum that should be achieved, but never say why. It makes it seem we are letting the perfect, or great, be the enemy of the good in some scenarios. For instance, if 10, 15, or 20 mbps is perfectly fine for most households, then shouldn't we use those numbers instead? [0]: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

woodruffw 9y ago
> Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download. 25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent, but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.
- rhino369 9y ago
  That could be solved with better QoS on the router right? Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.
  - woodruffw 9y ago
    Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates. Edit: I meant to add this: We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we recognize that Internet transfers aren't getting any smaller. It's good to look at ways to improve the status quo (e.g., QoS), but we should also be looking to change the status quo itself.

yorby 9y ago

if your kids play Roblox, 25mbit is the bare minimum... this game appear to be very inefficient