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The 3mbps upload speed for 25/3 does seem too slow with the rise of Zoom and other tools that can actually use the upload. Defining broadband as 25/10 or above

The 3mbps upload speed for 25/3 does seem too slow with the rise of Zoom and other tools that can actually use the upload. Defining broadband as 25/10 or above would make more sense. 25/10 is plenty for work applications. 100Mbps upload seems pretty unnecessary for the vast majority of uses unless the FCC had a goal of promoting BitTorrent and other p2p sharing. I have gigabit 1000/1000 from fios now and it does let me download games from steam faster though.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I don’t trust non symmetric connections advertised speeds in the first place, but 100Mbps is the minimum a family would need for multiple video calls and offsite backups.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I'm on a 7-person Zoom call with 15 fps video and 1 fps 4K screen-sharing right now. The quality is excellent. The real time stats are 300-314 kb/s upstream and 1350-1411 kb/s downstream. Even if zoom is incorrectly using kb to mean bytes (instead of bits), that's ~3 Mbps of upstream required per video call.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Yes, and when a US cable company advertises 25Mbps, they mean they will give you 25Mbps for 5 minutes which they take from the whole neighborhoods' 50Mbps, and then throttle you down after that to god knows what. If it's not fiber, I assume there's tons of overhead/lying with the numbers.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I pay for 200/10 Mbps and out of hundreds of tests, I have never gotten less than 235/11 and usually get 260/12 on hybrid cable (fiber backbone, DOCSIS 3.0 32x8 local loop) from Comcast.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        Are these tests akin to speedtest.net for a few minutes, or iperf over wireguard for a few hours?
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Those are speedtest.net, but being careful to choose a test endpoint not under Comcast's control. I just did one again and got 323/11. https://www.speedtest.net/result/11034876082 https://www.speedtest.net/result/11034876082 Assuming the setup time on my end is reasonable, I'm happy to run other tests for the thread's benefit.
        mindslight 6y ago
        Speedtest.net isn't a great a measurement because cable is notoriously bursty. Cable ISPs will give you the full (neighborhood) pipe for a minute, and then throttle you back to some set speed. This is helpful to speed up web browsing, but not when measuring bandwidth. I'd recommend timing any big upload that takes at least an hour. Ideally encrypted and somewhat unique, so that it's not likely to be prioritized or served by an edge box.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        I wasn't willing to go for an hour, but I planned an upload of one that would take about 15 minutes (to get well past any initial burst rate). The upload rate started at 1.3 MiB/s, quickly climbed to 1.4 MiB/s and stayed there the entire upload. This is a shot on my personal iPhone family video, so there's zero chance that it is cached anywhere. If you compute using a file byte as being 8 network bits (the reality is slightly higher, of course), you get: jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % time aws s3 cp iPhone_opening.MOV s3://XXX-XXX/photos/ upload: ./iPhone_opening.MOV to s3://XXX-XXX/photos/iPhone_opening.MOV aws s3 cp iPhone_opening.MOV s3://XXX-XXX/photos/ 12.84s user 7.66s system 2% cpu 14:38.47 total jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % ls -la iPhone_opening.MOV -rw-r--r--@ 1 jsokoloff access_bpf 1265329653 Aug 22 2020 iPhone_opening.MOV jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % echo -ne "bps: " && echo "1265329653 * 8 / (14 * 60 + 38.47)" | bc bps: 11523031 jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % echo -ne "Mibps/100: " && echo "1265329653 * 8 / (14 * 60 + 38.47) * 100 / 2 ^ 20" | bc Mibps/100: 1098 So, 10.98 Mibps (11.52 Mbps) for an almost 15 minute period, which matches the above extremely closely.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  I work remotely, had a Zoom call yesterday with 7 team-members. The call was about developing for users with slow and intermittent connections. While presenting, I showed my colleagues a live speedtest via fast.com, and I was around 6Mbps download and 500Kbps upload bandwidth. I would not try that with other video conferencing software, but Zoom can handle it well.
- guenthert 6y ago
  Have you considered to automate backups and schedule them at night, not the least to ensure consistency?

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I don’t trust non symmetric connections advertised speeds in the first place, but 100Mbps is the minimum a family would need for multiple video calls and offsite backups.

sokoloff 6y ago
I'm on a 7-person Zoom call with 15 fps video and 1 fps 4K screen-sharing right now. The quality is excellent. The real time stats are 300-314 kb/s upstream and 1350-1411 kb/s downstream. Even if zoom is incorrectly using kb to mean bytes (instead of bits), that's ~3 Mbps of upstream required per video call.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Yes, and when a US cable company advertises 25Mbps, they mean they will give you 25Mbps for 5 minutes which they take from the whole neighborhoods' 50Mbps, and then throttle you down after that to god knows what. If it's not fiber, I assume there's tons of overhead/lying with the numbers.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I pay for 200/10 Mbps and out of hundreds of tests, I have never gotten less than 235/11 and usually get 260/12 on hybrid cable (fiber backbone, DOCSIS 3.0 32x8 local loop) from Comcast.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      Are these tests akin to speedtest.net for a few minutes, or iperf over wireguard for a few hours?
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Those are speedtest.net, but being careful to choose a test endpoint not under Comcast's control. I just did one again and got 323/11. https://www.speedtest.net/result/11034876082 https://www.speedtest.net/result/11034876082 Assuming the setup time on my end is reasonable, I'm happy to run other tests for the thread's benefit.
        mindslight 6y ago
        Speedtest.net isn't a great a measurement because cable is notoriously bursty. Cable ISPs will give you the full (neighborhood) pipe for a minute, and then throttle you back to some set speed. This is helpful to speed up web browsing, but not when measuring bandwidth. I'd recommend timing any big upload that takes at least an hour. Ideally encrypted and somewhat unique, so that it's not likely to be prioritized or served by an edge box.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        I wasn't willing to go for an hour, but I planned an upload of one that would take about 15 minutes (to get well past any initial burst rate). The upload rate started at 1.3 MiB/s, quickly climbed to 1.4 MiB/s and stayed there the entire upload. This is a shot on my personal iPhone family video, so there's zero chance that it is cached anywhere. If you compute using a file byte as being 8 network bits (the reality is slightly higher, of course), you get: jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % time aws s3 cp iPhone_opening.MOV s3://XXX-XXX/photos/ upload: ./iPhone_opening.MOV to s3://XXX-XXX/photos/iPhone_opening.MOV aws s3 cp iPhone_opening.MOV s3://XXX-XXX/photos/ 12.84s user 7.66s system 2% cpu 14:38.47 total jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % ls -la iPhone_opening.MOV -rw-r--r--@ 1 jsokoloff access_bpf 1265329653 Aug 22 2020 iPhone_opening.MOV jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % echo -ne "bps: " && echo "1265329653 * 8 / (14 * 60 + 38.47)" | bc bps: 11523031 jsokoloff@Jim-Macbook Downloads % echo -ne "Mibps/100: " && echo "1265329653 * 8 / (14 * 60 + 38.47) * 100 / 2 ^ 20" | bc Mibps/100: 1098 So, 10.98 Mibps (11.52 Mbps) for an almost 15 minute period, which matches the above extremely closely.
daniellarusso 6y ago
I work remotely, had a Zoom call yesterday with 7 team-members. The call was about developing for users with slow and intermittent connections. While presenting, I showed my colleagues a live speedtest via fast.com, and I was around 6Mbps download and 500Kbps upload bandwidth. I would not try that with other video conferencing software, but Zoom can handle it well.
guenthert 6y ago
Have you considered to automate backups and schedule them at night, not the least to ensure consistency?