Just got the most interesting email from our internet provider. We have a fiber connection through the subsidiary of our electric coop called Elevate fiber. It’s cheap, we pay $49.95 for 100 Mbps going up to 150 Mbps for only $54.95 as of May 1.
However, due to the nature of the COVID-19 threat and how much information is being shared on-line Elevate has immediately upgraded everyone to 1 Gig at no charge until 18 May and will re-evaluate then based on whether our state is still in a statewide emergency.
First hit’s free I bet a bunch of us end up sticking with at at $79.95 once the emergency is over once we see how much we use it.
Only takes 5-10Mbps to stream and video is basically the worst case. We went from 25Mbps to 50Mbps a year ago and couldn’t even tell the difference. 1Gbps is basically crazy unless you get it for free.
Just wish I got the 300 mega bits Cox is supposed to provide consistently.
They keep sending me offers to spend more money for Gigablast 1Gbs but like others I don’t really have a need. I’d rather run two providers on a load balanced WAN with failover
That is likely for synchronous from one point out with no input in. Calculations at the link below suggest that I need around 385 Mbps on my line when I would want to broadcast asynchronously from home to my class of 55 students this coming Monday morning.
I’ve been spoiled by the 900 Mbps in the hardwire Ethernet from work.
Yet another reason to consider having the AV from the students turned off by default.
Well we’ve managed to see slowdowns with our use at lower speeds. Husband moves large files back and forth with hardware board designs. We both do streaming video broadcasting and sometimes we are both doing it from different places but over the same internet connection at the same time. I agree we are not the typical users but we’ve already seen some improvements in our workflows from the added speed.
Yes. The students OTOH will need to have that 5-10 Mbps on their end. To improve their experience, I advised them to
Use a hard wire connection to their router rather than their WiFi when possible.(*)
Assure that their dogs, cats, hamsters, family, friends, and pet rocks are all logged off from the internet when they need to be on the receiving end of the real-time audio+video lecture classes (this is especially true when for whatever reason they can only use WiFi).
(*) As an aside, I tested my connections speeds earlier this week and discovered that my WiFi was 5x faster than a direct hardwire to the router. I’ve got a set of replacement Cat6 cables shipped that I expect will fix this problem.
You must not do much to stress it. Streaming a video is not even close to a good worst case any more. Combine the streaming with downloads and security cameras and you’re chewing up bandwidth. That is a common combination. I have five people at home watching HD or 4k streams at once, probably with everybody using another device at the same time, a couple of cameras, and all of our Macs backup to Backblaze. I plugged in a new WiFi 6 router the other day and within seconds we had over 25 devices connected to it. When we upgraded from 450Mb to 1Gb from xfinity, it all started working without hiccups.
The bigger pipe also helps maintain internet speed for devices that are farther away from the router. Lose half or more of the speed due to WiFi distance and you still get usable transfer rates.
I bet a bunch of us end up sticking with at at $79.95 once the emergency is over once we see how much we use it.