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Interesting study... I found this to be really surprising: "In a web browsing test, 5G only reduced page loading times (PLT) by about 5% compared to 4G. This i

Interesting study... I found this to be really surprising: "In a web browsing test, 5G only reduced page loading times (PLT) by about 5% compared to 4G. This is because most of the time goes into rendering, i.e., is compute-bound. Even if we just compare download times, 5G only shows a 20.68% improvement over 4G."

dspillett 6y ago
Isn't the design intent of the 5G methodology more about maintaing useful throughout to individual devices in the presence of an increasing number of other devices (and other interference), than it is about massive throughput to single devices, in preparation for a predicted explosion of wireless IoT variable things? If so, then this result isn't a problem, we've just been primed to expect more by headline grabbing numbers coming out of artificial benchmarking experiments, that were never expected to be reproduced in the messy real world.
daneel_w 6y ago
It's about as surprising as the fact that sending e-mail, streaming video, playing online games and even browsing the web doesn't turn into a "Richer(tm) Experience(r)" when moving from a 30 mbit/s wired connection to a 100 mbit/s wired connection. 5G, just like 4G, will help with enabling more bandwidth availability and lower latencies for increasingly larger groups of clients to share, but as an individual user on a node that isn't over-encumbered there won't be any exciting differences to take note of compared to 4G - and in many cases, not even when compared to 3G.
- tzs 6y ago
  For wired internet, I suspect that a lot of people are paying for much faster connections than they actually need. As you note, e-mail, streaming video, playing online games, and browsing generally don't need a lot of speed. Latency and packet loss are far more important. 25 Mbit/s is fine for streaming one 4K UHD video with surround sound. It is mainly just large downloads where speed matters. Downloading a new game, or a big update to a game you have, or a major OS upgrade, will usually take longer on a slower connection. (Not always, because the server might not be fast enough. Not everyone pays the bandwidth costs to allow their download servers to support a bazillion simultaneous gigabit/s downloads). When I dropped cable TV/phone and went internet only, I decided to cut my speed from 600 Mbit/s ($90/month plan) to 100 Mbit/s ($55/month) to see if it was good enough. (If not, it could be raised easily just by placing an order on Comcast's website. No need to even interact with a human--they only make you interact with a human if you are trying to do something that will lower your bill). That was 6 months ago, and it is still sitting at 100 Mbit/s. I almost never notice that it is slower than it once was. Most large downloads I do are things I download in the background while doing other things, and then get to sometime later. For most of them, all the change from 600 to 100 did was mean that the gap between the download finishing and my getting around to wanting the data is smaller. One other important consideration is uploading. My old 600 plan had something like 25 Mbit/s upload. My 100 plan only has 7 Mbit/s upload. That sometimes is noticeable, such as when I need to upload a file to a server for work, then ssh to the server to do something there with the file.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Do you live with a family? I have seen complaints about WFH situations with children attending remote classes at the same time.
    - daneel_w 6y ago
      A connection of a "measly" 25-30 mbit/s down- and upstream suffices for many simultaneous standard quality video streams. However, there's nothing individual Internet users can do about their ISP overselling its internal bandwidth and capacity.
    - treis 6y ago
      Zoom says a group call at 1080p will take 3Mbps. The GPs connection should, theoretically, be able to handle 30ish simultaneous calls. Connection issues at home is probably a Wifi issue. They might have a poor signal to the router. Devices on the same channel will interfere with each other. As will the neighbors' network. And these days there are a lot of networks out there that interfere with each other. The other option is that the shared line back to the ISP can't handle the traffic. That's something that definitely can be happening due to covid. Traffic patterns are quite different and it's possible that things are getting saturated. But it's probably the wifi.
    - tzs 6y ago
      My comments were per person. If you have 4 people in the house and they might want to each stream different 4K UHD movies at the same time, for example, you'd need 100 Mbit/s. For video conferencing you should have about 3 Mbit/s upload for a group conference. That's where you will probably hit lower speed plan limits if you have multiple separate people doing group conferences, or one person doing a group video conference while 2 or 3 others are doing big downloads or streaming 4K video. A lot of residential internet services seem to set upload speed to not much more than is necessary for the ACKs needed when someone is downloading at the maximum download speed, and so someone doing an upload focused activity can have a big impact on other users in the household.
jiggawatts 6y ago
Keep in mind that 5G will be available in the new iPhone 12, which will have a faster CPU than most laptops. That'll be first generation i-Device with 5G support. There will likely be 2 or 3 generations before the next-G. An iPhone 15 will definitely benefit from higher bandwidth.

dspillett 6y ago

Isn't the design intent of the 5G methodology more about maintaing useful throughout to individual devices in the presence of an increasing number of other devices (and other interference), than it is about massive throughput to single devices, in preparation for a predicted explosion of wireless IoT variable things? If so, then this result isn't a problem, we've just been primed to expect more by headline grabbing numbers coming out of artificial benchmarking experiments, that were never expected to be reproduced in the messy real world.

daneel_w 6y ago

It's about as surprising as the fact that sending e-mail, streaming video, playing online games and even browsing the web doesn't turn into a "Richer(tm) Experience(r)" when moving from a 30 mbit/s wired connection to a 100 mbit/s wired connection. 5G, just like 4G, will help with enabling more bandwidth availability and lower latencies for increasingly larger groups of clients to share, but as an individual user on a node that isn't over-encumbered there won't be any exciting differences to take note of compared to 4G - and in many cases, not even when compared to 3G.

tzs 6y ago
For wired internet, I suspect that a lot of people are paying for much faster connections than they actually need. As you note, e-mail, streaming video, playing online games, and browsing generally don't need a lot of speed. Latency and packet loss are far more important. 25 Mbit/s is fine for streaming one 4K UHD video with surround sound. It is mainly just large downloads where speed matters. Downloading a new game, or a big update to a game you have, or a major OS upgrade, will usually take longer on a slower connection. (Not always, because the server might not be fast enough. Not everyone pays the bandwidth costs to allow their download servers to support a bazillion simultaneous gigabit/s downloads). When I dropped cable TV/phone and went internet only, I decided to cut my speed from 600 Mbit/s ($90/month plan) to 100 Mbit/s ($55/month) to see if it was good enough. (If not, it could be raised easily just by placing an order on Comcast's website. No need to even interact with a human--they only make you interact with a human if you are trying to do something that will lower your bill). That was 6 months ago, and it is still sitting at 100 Mbit/s. I almost never notice that it is slower than it once was. Most large downloads I do are things I download in the background while doing other things, and then get to sometime later. For most of them, all the change from 600 to 100 did was mean that the gap between the download finishing and my getting around to wanting the data is smaller. One other important consideration is uploading. My old 600 plan had something like 25 Mbit/s upload. My 100 plan only has 7 Mbit/s upload. That sometimes is noticeable, such as when I need to upload a file to a server for work, then ssh to the server to do something there with the file.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Do you live with a family? I have seen complaints about WFH situations with children attending remote classes at the same time.
  - daneel_w 6y ago
    A connection of a "measly" 25-30 mbit/s down- and upstream suffices for many simultaneous standard quality video streams. However, there's nothing individual Internet users can do about their ISP overselling its internal bandwidth and capacity.
  - treis 6y ago
    Zoom says a group call at 1080p will take 3Mbps. The GPs connection should, theoretically, be able to handle 30ish simultaneous calls. Connection issues at home is probably a Wifi issue. They might have a poor signal to the router. Devices on the same channel will interfere with each other. As will the neighbors' network. And these days there are a lot of networks out there that interfere with each other. The other option is that the shared line back to the ISP can't handle the traffic. That's something that definitely can be happening due to covid. Traffic patterns are quite different and it's possible that things are getting saturated. But it's probably the wifi.
  - tzs 6y ago
    My comments were per person. If you have 4 people in the house and they might want to each stream different 4K UHD movies at the same time, for example, you'd need 100 Mbit/s. For video conferencing you should have about 3 Mbit/s upload for a group conference. That's where you will probably hit lower speed plan limits if you have multiple separate people doing group conferences, or one person doing a group video conference while 2 or 3 others are doing big downloads or streaming 4K video. A lot of residential internet services seem to set upload speed to not much more than is necessary for the ACKs needed when someone is downloading at the maximum download speed, and so someone doing an upload focused activity can have a big impact on other users in the household.

jiggawatts 6y ago

Keep in mind that 5G will be available in the new iPhone 12, which will have a faster CPU than most laptops. That'll be first generation i-Device with 5G support. There will likely be 2 or 3 generations before the next-G. An iPhone 15 will definitely benefit from higher bandwidth.