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What speed of internet do you have and what is the minimum you would accept?


TravelingChris
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My bundled tv, internet and phone has gone up five dollars last month and another ten this month. However, we supposedly have 50MB speed and we have lots of computers in the house. So I looked at another service and the guy keeps talking about 3mb and maybe going up to 12MB. Even 25MB would save money but I know we (who supposedly get 50) often don't get 50 at night- we get more like 15. At those speeds, pages don't seem to load correctly and I get timed out. Now it could be that I am thinking this is needed just because my cable provider s*cks and when I am not getting the speed I am buying, they are really having tech issues. However, they always claim that they aren't.

 

So a few questions- what speed do you have, how many computers use the same connection (like through a router), and do you have issues? I want everyone to be able to play a game, or watch a video or listen to music at the same time. We normally have up to four computers in use but currently have six and my dh has two screens (I don't know if that makes a difference).

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Currently: Century Link DSL, nominally 5 Mbps, but in practice less and with frequent drop offs. They finally connected fiber to the neighborhood box, so we're moving up to a 40 Mpbs next week. Fingers crossed. 12 Mbps would almost certainly suffice... but we've been waiting to have something other than crappy internet for a *long* time.

 

Roku (wired), 2 computers (1 wired, 1 wireless), 1 laptop (wireless), 2 tablets (wireless), 2 smartphones (wireless)

 

ETA: When our 5 Mbps connection is running properly, we have no problems, but we're pretty close to the limit for HD on the Roku, and it only takes one or two drop-offs for our picture to be automatically downgraded.

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See I know we want youtube.

 

 

Given that 3 Mbps will often mean 2 or less, I'd cross it off my list and start out at 12, giving it a good trial before deciding whether to move up or not. Make sure whatever modem you'd get is compatible with the higher speeds.

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We live in a huge rural subdivision and we have ADSL, which, IMHO, is THE best Internet service available. We have 2 Mbps service, which I believe is the fastest available to us, out here in the sticks. There is no Cable TV service available where we live (sadly), so we have Directv, which has horrible Customer Service....

 

If we had to have Cable Modem service (we had that in our previous home in Cali) I would want a much faster connection, because, as you know from your own experience, the speeds they quote with Cable Modem are the maximum one might attain, if all of one's neighbors are NOT using their computers. The velocity of Cable Modem service is always shared with one's neighborhood.

 

We have 3 PCs on, all day, every day. And, intermittently, a Laptop is connected. We share the connection via a cheap Switch I bought for approximately USD$20, because our IPCop Router/Firewall box needs a new (used) hard drive... This room has cables, from each PC to the Switch. "Fast Ethernet".

 

Rarely do we find the 2Mb ADSL service to be inadequate. My wife is a gamer and sometimes DD will play a video on her (very low end Dell) PC that looks like we are watching from the Directv satellite.

 

Based on our experiences, many years ago, with the phone company in Cali, I never would have dreamed that I would now tell you that they are THE best Internet provider we have ever had.

 

Frequently, when there is a glitch, I do not call them and they find/fix the problem. Obviously they have great monitoring for their system. If not, after 30 or 60 minutes, I will call them and let them know they have an issue. Or, learn that they have an outage and are well aware of it...

 

If you switch, I suggest you go for ADSL. With ADSL, the speed you pay for is the speed you are guaranteed, 100% of the time...

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We have our internet through Cablevision. We get "up to 15 mbps". I don't know what it is in actual use but we regularly have 5 different computers on the internet at the same time, through our WiFi router. Pages load quickly, usually pretty much instantly. When I feel like it's "slow" it might take 5 or 10 seconds to load.

 

ETA: I forgot that we also have 3 smartphones, an Ipad (dd's), and a tablet that could also be on at the same time.

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Do you really want to know? :D

 

Satellite internet. Enough speed to browse non-graphic-heavy websites. Cannot stream. Anything. I can get about 2 minutes of a YouTube video once a day. Then it shuts me down. I also pay just over $90 per month for it. It was that or dial-up.

 

Welcome to the back end of the middle of the middle of nowhere. :(

 

It is beautiful out here, though. :)

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We have 15mb cable internet through Charter. We've had two laptops (one online gaming, one streaming Hulu while downloading other stuff) and the tv (streaming Netflix) going simultaneously with no problems. Granted, we don't do that very often, but the few times we have done it, everything worked perfectly.

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I have no clue, so I asked my son.

 

He sighed, and told me to just go get the helmet haircut and a polyester jumpsuit and make it official.

 

Best answer I can give: my internet is fast enough to log into his account and tweet a series of ridiculous and embarassing comments. Now the whole world knows how much he wuvs his mommy. Oh, and Justin Bieber.

 

Any slower would be unacceptable.

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I have no clue, so I asked my son.

 

He sighed, and told me to just go get the helmet haircut and a polyester jumpsuit and make it official.

 

Best answer I can give: my internet is fast enough to log into his account and tweet a series of ridiculous and embarassing comments. Now the whole world knows how much he wuvs his mommy. Oh, and Justin Bieber.

 

Any slower would be unacceptable.

 

 

Well played. 😎

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Man I'm getting ripped off! 50 sounds like a dream--a dream we don't have available here.

 

Our internet SUCKS. I pay for 15 but the speedtest.net clocks us around 8. Of course the speed test on the internet provider's website clocks us at 10. In any case, they swear they can't get it any faster and have given us new modems, etc.

 

It's a rip!

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we had a higher rated DSL, and last fall got comcast. the *only* thing I like about comcast is the speed. we average 30 - 40 mbps. ds just did a speed test, and got 62mbps.

we have a router with four computers wired and two laptops wireless. we also have started using our blue-ray for internet tv - wired. we frequently have three hardwired and two laptops at the same time with rare problems.

 

eta: our smartphones and kindle don't run off the wireless, they have their own 3g or 4g network.

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I'm not sure but I know we can only do one thing at a time. We have centurylink and I hate it. We only have Netflix, no cable so either somebody can play on the computer or we can watch tv. We can only use one computer at a time. Sometimes my ipad or phone will pick up the wireless and it'll be okay but not always. But it's the only place that has service out here in the middle of nowhere.

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We use verizon mobile broadband, we plan on changing to satellite in March to save money (through Dishnet). Does anyone on here have Dishnet? If so what do you think of it?

Otherwise our only other option is something from the phone company, we haven't had a landline in nearly 10 years and don't plan to get one now. And I heard from a lot of people that it isn't at all reliable.

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I have whatever lowest is available through Verizon.

 

I'm always on my phone. Sometimes the iPad, laptop, dd's iPod, and I let my neighbor connect with whatever devices she uses.

 

Only problem I've had is that youtube doesn't play well, but that's been a positive for us.

 

Said gently.... if Verizon catches you sharing it with the neighbor, they will drop your service. They can also choose, if they desire, to charge her with theft of services, and you as an accessory to the theft of services. One of ds' friends did something similar (I think it was Verizon, but it could have been one of the others) and got dropped, along with receiving a legal letter letting him know they were being "nice" to not pursue legal action. Not really sure how they got caught though...

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We have the cheapest Comcast plan, forgot what's the bandwidth but probably 25Mbps.

Just did a speed test on speakeasy and got 14.5Mbps download 5.5Mbps upload, comcast speedtest says 17 download and 5.5 upload

When we have my ipod, 2 ipads, two laptops and one PC running, it tends to drop connection. The PC which has the USB wireless connector drops connection the most while the laptops with wireless built-in are pretty stable.

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Ummmmmmm.....7? :confused1: I think it's something to do with the number 7. :lol: We moved and this is twice what we had before (???) at a similar price. We have a main computer, a laptop, and Netflix on the Wii all going without problems most of the time, though youtube on the Wii all by itself with no other internet usage still has to be buffered every few seconds???

 

 

I hope somewhere in there was helpful information. :001_rolleyes:

 

ETA: I was right! I asked dh and it IS 7! (MB)

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18Mbps download (1.5 on upload) which I can live with because I work from home. Includes 150GB roughly a month.

 

We really do get that speed (cable) - I have checked at various times during the day and evening. We run 3-4 computers, a couple of phones and netflix without problem. Youtube is the biggest consumer for our usage, so when we hit 80% for the month, I block it at the router so we don't go over.

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How's this for pathetic?

 

 

Download speed:

2.3Mb

Upload speed:

0.3Mb

 

Just tested it. We have no choice as we live in the countryside and have aluminium cables. Sorry about the funky font - can't change it. We run three laptops off a wireless connection in the house.

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Okay, I don't think I want to change to slower. Maybe a bit slower but not from 50 down to 12, I don't think. Seems like people are happy with around 25, so I will have to look into that. Right now I am comparing cable channels because while we don't use some of the regular channels hardly ever, we tend to use more obscure channels more -- so we are never on Comedy, Cartoon, Nick, Disney, E!, and a whole bunch of others but we are on DIY, Science, Wild, and other less common channels.

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