Why have a huge bandwidth?

[exorcist_737]

Relatively recently I decided to switch from a Satellite to a DSL connection because the former wasn't worth it (inconsistent speed, frequent outages, etc. all this for an outrageous price). Not knowing too much what to take, I took the lowest package (600 kbps download/100 kbps upload), knowing that I could always change to a faster connection any time I wanted to.

It's been a few weeks now and I have used the Net heavily, and am dead chuffed by my connection. It's fast - pages appear very quickly and I don't even have the time to go and make a coffee while downloading large things (just today I downloaded a 5 meg program in just over a minute for example). I'm not a big gamer either, but the few times I tried it worked perfectly smoothly as well.

At the back of my mind is the knowledge that I could double the bandwidth to 1.2 mbps for the relatively modest additional cost of CHF 20 per month (at current rates about USD 15) or to 2.4 mbps for CHF 50 (slightly less than USD 40). But why? I cannot see the advantages of it for the private user. I download things fast enough already - a few seconds faster would hardly really make a difference - and whereas for the biggest downloading source (p2p programs) I never get to exploit my bandwidth fully already anyway because it's dependent on the upload bandwidth of the other users. I thought it might be important with a shared connection, but all computers here at home get 600 kps bandwidth when connected, no matter the total number of computers.

For this reason, I'd be interested in hearing why others have opted for the larger bandwidths? What use do you make of it that would justify passing to such a speed? Is it just sheer atavism? Not judging, just asking.

I have a friend in Germany who has a 5 mbps connection (VLAN)... for €39 per month. Damn, it's fast, but what use?

Any point of view would be appreciated.

e_737

[Kodo]

depends on what your needs are. For me, it's large files. When you frequently download 25,50 ,100+ MB files, it feels like you're on dialup again. It's all relative I guess.

Others like to run servers that need a fat pipe.

[goldfish]

All depends on how you percieve your speed. Personally, I'm always downloading serveral files at once, and my transfer speeds max out at about 60kb/s. I've also got several computers on my home network, so I can have a large ammount of transfer going on at any one time, and for me 512kb/s isnt quite cutting it.

If you think the performance of anything computer related is good enough for you, then there is no point upgrading. But depending on what you like to do with your machine, you might want an upgrade. Right now, I've been checking out my RAM (currently 512MB) and I've found for the applications I run, I'm using more memory than I have physically installed. And this is noticable to me, because the hard drive is working harder using the page file to make up for my lack of memory, which means the performance of the machine is impaired.

Performance is all in the perception. If you have a PII with 64MB of ram, and you use low resource applications, you may find they run as fast as you would want them to. However, I use photoshop, UT2004, macromedia dreamweaver, flash, cool edit, cakewalk .... all of which require a computer of a good speed, and if they don't, they run very slowly (or what I find to be slow in any case). They run at a speed that I find acceptable.

[exorcist_737]

Yeah sure I understand all this and to be honest I am considering sticking with my current connection. My question was more theoretical. For example, why would you need to download big, 25, 50, 100 megs files on a regular basis? I could think of a few occasional needs, such as Windows XP SP2 or something related, but in those cases you can just leave your computer or overnight or something like that. The other type would be movies, but then you'd be using a p2p program anyhow, your exact bandwidth would hardly really matter (I can't max my bandwidth with p2p, even changing the settings).

Though I admit, the server issue is one I did not think about. But is that really widespread?

[Kodo]

You would be surprised at how common running a server is.

[goldfish]

Like a game server, for example. Not many people count that as its just an "internet game" that they run on their machine that other people join, but it needs some serious bandwidth with a good number of people playing.

[exorcist_737]

Um yeah actually that would be quite a good reason re hosting games, never thought of that...

[Wookie]

man I went to this building yesterday that had DSL, across the street from the carrier, 7 Mbps Download, they paying 49 a month. Man that upsets me.

I got 3 Mbps with cable, when I download an ISO for linux for example, it is much better to have the bandwidth, ive downloaded probably 5 in the past two months. I like to download a lot at once to. I think I cap close to 500 KBps, about 480.

But for game servers cable upload isnt anywhere near good enough. For counterstrike the upload supports a max 8 people and if you do anything else it really haggles the server bandwidth. I wish I could get more upload but they dont offer it. Id love to run a few dedicated game servers.

[Wookie]

Last week I went to the university of miami with wife,,,in the hospital I was DLing at 3-4 gigs a sec,,on wirless 802.11g,,,on my laptop,,,but at home I can just squeek out a gig ,,,but nothing to shake a stick at LOL...could run a gaming server,,but its a govt line LOL think not,,,,


you HAVE to mean megs lol, I dont think its possible to download at gigs a second since you would hae to have a huge amount of ram since a HDD cant write that fast. That and wireless and wired routers dont support those speeds :)

Yeah I was remote connected to a server hosted on DS 48 line and downloaded a file of download.com, got 8 megs a second. My Jaw Dropped.

I so wanted to install a game and run it :)