How fast is your internet connection in Mbps, and do you personally think it's fast, slow or average?

Home: 3Mbps Verizon ADSL, as good as it gets up here in the boonies being 24,000 feet away from the CO and hooked onto a remote DSLAM. Slow but reliable. Cable Internet is an option, but since these guys know that they're the only game in town, their prices are...ahem. And FiOS is not getting here, ever...

Work: My desktop is directly tied into an Adtran router being fed by an old-fashioned T3 which is 42Mbps both ways. I'd be delighted to have anything close to that at home, but it's not going to happen anytime soon...

 

I've had Comcast Hi-speed internet since 2002, and I'm currently on their 25Mbps tier. My real-life speeds are typically between 25 and 29 Mbps (it only goes below 25Mbps once every 2-3 months), and the reliability is excellent. On top of that, their speeds have been improving steadily over the years, as evidenced by the speedtest.net results I've collected over the years (the top one is the most recent):



Sometime between the speed tests above and below this line, we purchased a DOCSIS 3.0 modem as recommended by Comcast because they claimed that we would get faster internet speeds. They weren't lying--look how much slower the test results were before the DOCSIS 3.0 modem upgrade:




Overall, I think my internet is pretty fast nowadays. Yes, I've actually had an EXCELLENT experience with Comcast... but only for their hi-speed internet. Their Cable TV is a COMPLETELY different story....

 

We have Suddenlink basic 15/1.5 but average around 20/2. This past summer it was up to 30/5, but has gone down. Now that I have a fully functional modem and a decent router, I don't get disconnects and I find it fairly fast compared to whatever AT&T package my mom has back home.

I would like to upgrade to their 30/5 or 50/10 package, but they won't let me just pay the difference because it's through my apartment. I would have to open a new account and pay full price in addition to what's built into my rent. The irritating part is that the apartments around me have AT&T and the residents are able to pay the difference when upgrading but, Suddenlink has great customer service!

 

Home 1:FiOS 50/25. Averages 56/40.
Home 2:FiOS 25/5. Averages 24.5/4.8.

Work (NY/Chicago): OC3/STM-1. T3 (Level 3) as backup/redundancy/non-data(i.e. web browsing, email, sync, etc.). Co-location service; Dark fiber/Lit 1G

So what's the subjective difference? Between work and home? (Besides the extremely radical difference in price?)

Latency. But it's mostly only noticeable via benchmarks. The OC3 and co-location connections (Dark Fiber/Lit 1Gs) are used for their extremely low latency and superior connectivity and scalability. The Dark Fiber connections do not interface with the internet though. They have a singular mission: trading. The T3 is used for internet connectivity. Meanwhile, the OC3's costs are entirely paid for by leasing co-location server connectivity via the dark fiber channels to clients.

Between my 2 FiOS home connections, the difference is only noticeable with large downloads. Otherwise, websites do not come up noticeably faster with the 50/25 relative to the 25/5 service. When my phone contract is up, I'll try to negotiate a free upgrade to 50/25 for the 25/5. It's not worth the $10 (+tax) per month upgrade price, IMO. Unless one does a lot of D/L'ing. Even so, it's hard to saturate that kind of bandwidth.

I just hope Verizon (FiOS) never resorts to metering and throttling. FiOS has been very reliable. Uptime is >98% and the speed is very, very stable. I used to have CableVision (home 1) and Time Warner (home 2) cable internet. Uptime was maybe 95% - 93% respectively. Speed was all over the place considering how Docsis networks work. It would be hard to go back to cable internet after experiencing fiber optic service (FiOS).

And naturally, the work connections are <s>rock</s> boulder solid. They have to be considering the mission and the "price." Uptime has been 100% outside of planned/scheduled maintenance downtime.

If I moved out into the boonies (like ajkula66), I think I'd have to go ADSL too or have a T1 or fractional T3 wired out to my "homestead". Maybe even have several ADSL lines wired out as that would be far more cost effective than the cost of a single T1, let alone a fractional T3. If cable internet is available, then that's an easy choice. Anything but satellite. I've used satellite internet before and it leaves much to be desired.


Anyway, bottom line; unless one is D/L'ing like a mad person or has a lot of peeps in yo' crew using the net at the same time, pick the service level you can best afford without having to think about the price. Higher bandwidth doesn't necessarily make the net go "BOOM." There's a lot that affects the apparent speed of the net. From your computer/browser's ability to render a webpage, to webpage design, to number of hops between you and the website's host, your router & its config. etc., etc.

 

I understood very little in the first part of your post, other than FiOS. But then again, I only use DOCSIS for home use.

It could be worse. I could be having to suffer thru what passes for internet at my Grandpa's summer house. On an island, you have only one choice for your internet carrier. And his house is too far away from the multiplexer for wired DSL. So he/we had to resort to their 'wireless internet' package...aka franchise resale WiMAX from Clearwire.



Top speed was 60KBps up, and 14KBps down. Don't ask about the latency.

 

The connection I'm currently using tests at about 5mbps down and about .5 up. that is when its working perfectly(which is never). It's being shot here from a few miles away, and I'm shooting it another 4km. I'm sharing it with ~40 people.

Lets just say its slow. There isn't much usage before me, and if I need to I can axe the other ~39 people but I rarely have business that important. Yes sorry to disappoint fellow NBR members, you aren't that important.

 

Some results outside the US...

My home connection is at 10mbps with up of 1mbps. The result is fairly stable and reliable connection I really get what I pay for, which is extremely rare here


On the island I have a 1mbps connection with 1mbps up and that's.... The top speed that they can provide. Im actually in one of the few spots in the island that have a landline based connection

On the island its very expensive being marginally more costly on the speed/price ratio. Despite that the actual price being based on a govt law regarding broadband access...



dazing and confusing via taptalk

 

Since I started building out my private cloud (and therefore do a lot of work on what are effectively remote desktop sessions), I've strived to have at least 100 up/down everywhere I live/work. e.g. main home has 200/200 - i.e. 2x uncontended & symmetrical 100Mb fibre. My crashpad has issues, Internet-wise - way lower, and it bothers me, especially as I'm there more often than the fact that I call it my crashpad indicates.

 

FIOS at work 60Mbps and at home around 32 down. The rest of the office on the network is around 32Mbps as well. I only jump onto theirs when I do some heavy scanning as I do not have a fast scanner.

 

10Mbps down, 0.75Mbps up, all traditional old fashioned ADSL2. Good ol' Australia tier internet.