5 ms·

In metro Atlanta, just outside of city limits, I was desperate for fiber for a long time. Forced to watch other neighboring cities get Google Fiber at great mon

In metro Atlanta, just outside of city limits, I was desperate for fiber for a long time. Forced to watch other neighboring cities get Google Fiber at great monthly rates. I pay a bit more with AT&T now, but it’s so worth every penny between streaming, gaming, and personal projects.

testing22321 1mo ago
Do you really notice it with streaming? I have 80Mbps cable, and nothing has ever slowed down. If I download something over a couple of gigs I just get a glass of water and it’s done.
- kccqzy 1mo ago
  They are probably talking about streaming to an audience (upload speed).
- RiverCrochet 1mo ago
  Do you have a data cap? The cable provider near me charges you $10 for every 50GB over 1.25TB monthly. A while ago they offered an "unlimited" plan without that cap at a higher monthly rate. I've never heard of a fiber connection with a data cap like that. I ended up moving to fiber eventually, it was cheaper for the same speed and the upload speed matched the download speed as well.
  - testing22321 1mo ago
    I intentionally get the slowest speed possible that has no data cap. Was 50, then it went up to 80 a year ago.
- outworlder 1mo ago
  Not the person you are asking, but definitely yes. Bandwidth isn't the only metric at play here. Bufferbloat was horrendous with Comcast so latency varied wildly depending on what was happening on the network. The only way around it was to cap download and upload to 80%, and that's a large dent on the already anemic upload. And I had to cap client upload too, otherwise one client could easily saturate upload and now not even TCP ACK packets were being reliably sent. The main problem isn't cable per se, is the asymmetric link. EDIT: Also 1Gbps symmetric allows me to backup my NAS offsite without impacting anyone else.
- AndrewDucker 1mo ago
  Absolutely. Buy multi-GB game, watch it download quickly at gigabit speeds, be able to play it two minutes later. Can't do that on 80Mbps.
- frollogaston 1mo ago
  I don't notice. I had 60mbit/s for a while and it was fine. That's two typical 4K streams. Now I have 1gbit/s that I never use. What I did notice was the 1mbit/s upload speed that came with it. Uploading large files to Google Drive was impossible, not just slow but would actually time out, plus bad things happen when you saturate the uplink that way.
- chalupa-supreme 1mo ago
  I think there were big issues in my area because there are only two providers so congestion would peak in the evening from 4pm - 8pm. Netflix/Youtube would playback lower resolution and we’d be stuck with loading circles if we manually set it higher. If I remember correctly, that issue became less frequent before the switch, but I haven’t had the lower resolution issues since.

testing22321 1mo ago

Do you really notice it with streaming? I have 80Mbps cable, and nothing has ever slowed down. If I download something over a couple of gigs I just get a glass of water and it’s done.

kccqzy 1mo ago
They are probably talking about streaming to an audience (upload speed).
RiverCrochet 1mo ago
Do you have a data cap? The cable provider near me charges you $10 for every 50GB over 1.25TB monthly. A while ago they offered an "unlimited" plan without that cap at a higher monthly rate. I've never heard of a fiber connection with a data cap like that. I ended up moving to fiber eventually, it was cheaper for the same speed and the upload speed matched the download speed as well.
- testing22321 1mo ago
  I intentionally get the slowest speed possible that has no data cap. Was 50, then it went up to 80 a year ago.
outworlder 1mo ago
Not the person you are asking, but definitely yes. Bandwidth isn't the only metric at play here. Bufferbloat was horrendous with Comcast so latency varied wildly depending on what was happening on the network. The only way around it was to cap download and upload to 80%, and that's a large dent on the already anemic upload. And I had to cap client upload too, otherwise one client could easily saturate upload and now not even TCP ACK packets were being reliably sent. The main problem isn't cable per se, is the asymmetric link. EDIT: Also 1Gbps symmetric allows me to backup my NAS offsite without impacting anyone else.
AndrewDucker 1mo ago
Absolutely. Buy multi-GB game, watch it download quickly at gigabit speeds, be able to play it two minutes later. Can't do that on 80Mbps.
frollogaston 1mo ago
I don't notice. I had 60mbit/s for a while and it was fine. That's two typical 4K streams. Now I have 1gbit/s that I never use. What I did notice was the 1mbit/s upload speed that came with it. Uploading large files to Google Drive was impossible, not just slow but would actually time out, plus bad things happen when you saturate the uplink that way.
chalupa-supreme 1mo ago
I think there were big issues in my area because there are only two providers so congestion would peak in the evening from 4pm - 8pm. Netflix/Youtube would playback lower resolution and we’d be stuck with loading circles if we manually set it higher. If I remember correctly, that issue became less frequent before the switch, but I haven’t had the lower resolution issues since.